SKY DRAGONEXPEDITIONS
All ten journeysCultural, trekking, festival, wildlife
Eight days shaped around whichever tshechu falls in your travel window — two days at the festival, and the western valleys around them.
A tshechu is a religious festival held in a dzong courtyard in honour of Guru Padmasambhava. Masked cham dances are performed over several days by monks and trained laymen, the whole district turns out in its best kira and gho, and ordinary business stops. It is the single best day to be in Bhutan.
The itinerary below is what we would run as written. Every day of it is adjustable — add a night, drop a drive, change a valley. Read when to travel if you are still choosing dates, and entry and fees for what a quotation covers.
Anyone travelling in the festival months who wants the culture rather than the landscape as the centre of the trip. Festival days involve a lot of sitting and standing on stone; the rest of the itinerary is standard western Bhutan.
Private departure, any date. We reply with a written itinerary and a full quotation.
Overnight stops in order. Read more about each valley on the valleys page.
Driving times are realistic for Bhutanese mountain roads. Everything here is adjustable.
Arrival at Paro and a gentle afternoon. Kyichu Lhakhang, whose original hall is attributed to the seventh century, and a walk along the river.
If the festival is in Paro, the dzong will already be filling with people setting up.
An early start for the courtyard. The dances run through the day in a fixed sequence, each one a teaching rather than a performance: the Dance of the Black Hats, the Dance of the Lords of the Cremation Grounds, the Judgement of the Dead. Between them the atsaras — masked clowns — work the crowd and puncture the solemnity, which is entirely the point.
The audience matters as much as the dancing. Families arrive with packed lunches and stay all day; children are passed along rows; the best clothes in the house come out of storage for it. Your guide will explain what each dance means as it starts.
A day away from the crowds. The climb to Taktsang gains roughly 900 metres and takes four to five hours return, with the cafeteria at the halfway point and the monastery at around 3,120 metres.
Built in 1692 around Guru Padmasambhava's meditation cave, damaged by fire in 1998 and rebuilt. Cameras and bags are left at the entrance.
The short drive to the capital, then Buddha Dordenma at Kuensel Phodrang, the National Memorial Chorten of 1974 and the takin preserve at Motithang.
Tashichho Dzong in the late afternoon. If the festival falls in Thimphu rather than Paro, this is where you will spend tomorrow.
The National Textile Museum is the best place in the country to understand what you have been looking at in the courtyard — the weaves, the fibres, the difference between everyday and ceremonial dress, and why a single kishuthara kira can take a year to make.
Then the Zorig Chusum institute, where students learn the thirteen traditional arts: painting, sculpture, wood carving, embroidery, and the making of the masks worn at the tshechu you have just watched.
Dochu La at about 3,100 metres, with its 108 chortens, then the long descent into the warm Punakha valley.
The twenty-five minute walk through the rice terraces to Chimi Lhakhang, built in 1499 and associated with Drukpa Kunley — whose iconography, once you have seen the atsaras at the festival, makes rather more sense.
Punakha Dzong, built in 1637–38 at the confluence of the Pho Chhu and Mo Chhu, is where the Punakha Drubchen and Tshechu are held each late winter — a re-enactment of a seventeenth-century battle followed by the festival proper.
In the afternoon, the walk up to Khamsum Yulley Namgyal Chorten, about forty-five minutes through the terraces.
The drive back over Dochu La to Paro for your flight. If your departure is late in the day this is comfortable; if it is early we move you to Paro the previous evening — tell us your flight and we will build the day around it.
Altitude range on this journey is 1,250–3,120 m. Sleeping heights matter more than the passes you drive over — see travel questions on altitude.
One figure covers everything on the left, the Sustainable Development Fee and the visa fee included. There are no compulsory extras added later.
More general questions are answered on travel questions.
We do not publish prices, because a private trip priced honestly depends on your dates, your group and the hotels you want. Tell us those three things and you will have a real figure.
No call centre and no automated quote. A person in our Thimphu office reads what you have written and replies with a plan built around it.
Private departure on any date you choose. We reply with a written itinerary and a full quotation.
Cultural
8 days · 7 nightsParo, Thimphu and Punakha at a pace that leaves room for the Taktsang climb, an afternoon in the Punakha rice terraces and a drive over Chele La.
Cultural
11 days · 10 nightsEast from Punakha over the Pele La to Trongsa, then into the four valleys of Bumthang — the oldest temples in the country and the quietest roads.
Cultural
14 days · 13 nightsThe full length of the country, west to east, over Bhutan's highest road pass into the weaving districts most itineraries never reach.