Bhutan: land of the thunder dragon

It’s 5:30am in the central Bhutan town of Paro, and under the light of a misty pink moon, the air thick with silence, I stand in the doorway of my homestay decked out in full hiking gear and drinking a cup of sweet, gingery milk tea. A basket of crunchy flattened rice is offered around along with butter biscuits, before my group gets into a minivan and drives off, the sun just beginning to illuminate the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. It’s not far, but Bhutan’s winding roads (and laissez-faire approach to timekeeping) make everything longer, and it’s 7am by the time we reach the starting point of our hike.

As we stumble out of the van, Dorji Bidha, our guide, points up to our final destination: a white-walled, red-and-gold-roofed building clinging to the rocks in the distance – the mythical Tiger’s Nest, a Buddhist monastery originally built in 1692.

Perched at 10,250 feet above sea level, Tiger’s Nest is one of this landlocked Central Asian country’s main draws. Legend has it that the second incarnation of Buddha meditated here in the 8th century, hitching a ride up to this impossible height on his consort, who transformed herself into a flying tiger. Today, the sacred spot is marked by an extensive network of shrines maintained by a community of monks.

The hike is just under four miles in distance and 1,700 feet in height. It’s not especially gruelling. However, it’s the high altitude that poses the problem. Holding a conversation sets my heart hammering as we make our way up the climb, so I turn my attention to my surroundings: a forest of lichen-covered oaks, blue pine, and poplar trees. We see magpies, miles away from their European counterparts, with long, grey-and-white-flecked tails and bright-yellow beaks.

By 9am an altitude-induced headache has kicked in, and by 9:44, legs trembling, we enter the Tiger’s Nest complex.

By 9am an altitude-induced headache has kicked in, and by 9:44, legs trembling, we enter the Tiger’s Nest complex. It’s near-empty when we arrive, and we explore the eight shrines with Dorji. The first shrine we enter, on the first floor, is the oldest. Cut into the rockface, it survived the fire that destroyed the rest of the building in the late 90s. In the middle is the fierce face of the wrathful incarnation of the second Buddha, cast out of bronze and painted in gold. His backdrop is a mass of swirling red flames.

The walls are painted with more depictions from the Buddhist faith, illustrated in glorious technicolour. This level of idolatry takes your breath away. After nearly a week exploring Bhutan’s landscapes and culture, the gods have become familiar faces: the serene-looking god of longevity, with his curling moustache; the god of energy, with his five-skull crown; and the 1,000-armed god of compassion, who tried so hard to look after people in need of his help that his head split into 11.

The courtyard at Six Senses Thimphu

We see where the second Buddha meditated, a hole in the rock now filled with money that the monks climb down to collect once a year (Dorji jokingly describes it as the “Bank of Bhutan”); the cave where the tigress went to die after her exhausting flight; and the butter lamp room, where we each light one of these stocky yellow candles (which did actually used to run on butter) and silently say a prayer. I don’t know if it’s the altitude, but I find the spirituality of this temple affecting, and I wander around in my socks in awe-filled silence.

After an hour, feet beginning to hurt from the cold, we turn to leave, and my bubble bursts thanks to a crowd of tourists that has accumulated outside. I’m grateful for Dorji’s insistence on the early start, which maintained the spellbinding magic of Taktsang (the monastery’s name in the local Dzongkha language). She tells me many people come to Bhutan just to hike up to Tiger’s Nest, tick it off their bucket list, and then move on to nearby destinations.

To me, this attitude sounds, well, insane. Bhutan is a land of cloud-wreathed mountains; 16th-century circular fortresses, known as dzhong; and rushing rivers. The air smells of woodsmoke, cows wander the streets freely, and in Thimphu, the country’s capital, there are no traffic lights: instead, at the most complicated junction, a white-gloved man stands under a point-roofed structure, manually directing the flow of traffic. Of course, western influence is strong, but despite 2024 marking 50 years since the country opened its border to visitors, Bhutan has preserved much of its heritage. For the most part, I feel like I’m walking around in a real-life folklore legend, and after a week I’ve only just begun to scratch beneath the surface.

This commitment to preserving tradition is led by a visionary young monarchy. Bhutan’s first king only came to the throne in 1907; before then, the country was made up of semi-independent regions, often at odds with each other.

His descendant, the current (and fifth) king Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck has set up a variety of initiatives to maintain the well-being of his 800,000 subjects while also bringing tourism’s economic benefits to as many of the country’s nearly 15,000 square miles as the government possibly can.

At the moment, tourism is concentrated in central and west Bhutan, easily accessed by the country’s only airport at Paro, where you land on the world’s second-highest runway after a flight that takes you between brown and grey mountains so close that it feels like a gust of wind could have disastrous consequences. In fact, the runway here is so precarious that only a handful of pilots are allowed to fly into it, most of whom work for the national airline, Drukair.

Bridges are sometimes decorated with prayer flags in Bhutan

Marcus Westberg

There are only six flights scheduled into Paro each day, which dramatically limits the number of visitors. This deliberate decision is compounded by the country’s Sustainable Development Fee, a $100-a-day fee that is invested in environmental, social, and infrastructure projects. If that seems pricey, it was slashed in half from $200 at the end of 2023, and the new price will remain in effect until 2027. If Bhutan seems like your kind of place, you might want to think about booking your visit now.

You’re also required to travel with a local, and you’ll see all tourists accompanied by a Bhutanese guide in their traditional dress – men in kira and women in gho, woven out of yak fur in checked and striped patterns, not dissimilar to the tartan of the Scottish Highlands (shortbread butter biscuits are also curiously popular).

These rules set the scene for a unique experience, and I am lucky enough to be exploring Bhutan’s central and western regions with the pioneering Audley Travel, one of the first British tour operators to make inroads into this incredible country. Dorji, my group’s guide, makes our trip: her knowledge is unsurpassable. The process to get a guiding licence in Bhutan is strict – she mentions that there’s a three-month course for studying the symbolism and idolatry found in the temples alone.

But it’s not only tourism that runs differently here. In 2023, the king announced plans for the Mindfulness City at Gelephu, a new economic hub designed to give young people more opportunities without leaving the country, while limiting external influence. It’s an experiment that the rest
of the world will watch with curiosity.

Revolutionary ideas seem to be a royal legacy. In 2008, the fourth king cemented a philosophy called Gross National Happiness in the Bhutanese constitution. There are too many parts to this to explain here, but in short, it leans on Buddhist principles and focuses on the country’s sustainable development – for example, a law stating that Bhutan must remain at least 60% forested (it currently sits at 72%).

This people-first approach benefits the royal family. They’re regarded with near-holy reverence, and their faces are featured and displayed in photos on the walls of just about every building you enter. The country has been democratic since 1953, but the king remains very involved in government. Despite being secular, governance is strongly influenced by Buddhism.

A masked dance at the annual Paro Tshechu festival

The importance of religion in Bhutan is never clearer to me than when we attend Paro’s Tshechu, or masked dance, a five-day extravaganza that takes place once a year. The people come out in their finery. Women wear silk gho in brilliant blues, majestic purples, and fiery oranges, turning the hillside into a sea of colour as the crowds gather to watch the festival’s main event:
a ritualistic dance performance.

Monks wearing masks jump and spin to the rhythmic sound of a beating drum. Dorji tells us that people take their seats as early as 1am in order to get a good view of the dancing and that it gets so intense that it’s not unusual for the dancers to faint from dehydration. Surrounded by the mountains and under the clear light of the Himalayan sun, everything takes on a mythical feel, which is par for the course in Bhutan, where every historical event is explained by a legend or a Buddhist teaching.

One of my favourite stories is that of the Divine Madman, or Drupka Kunley. We pay our respects to this 15th-century saint at Chimi Lhakhang, a tiny 16th-century temple just outside Punakha. Kunley was an avid follower of Tantric Buddhism and used the unusual teaching methods of singing, carousing with women and drinking to spread the Buddhist faith, navigating the mountains using his phallus like a helicopter.

Kunley used the unusual teaching methods of singing, carousing with women and drinking to spread the Buddhist faith, navigating the mountains using his phallus like a helicopter.

Today, you’ll see his “flaming thunderbolt of wisdom” painted on house walls all over Bhutan, most commonly on either side of the entry door, to bring luck. In the temple, we prostrate before the altar and make a small cash offering. A monk blesses me, tapping my forehead with a wooden phallus and a bow and arrow. In the corner, a photo album is stuffed with images of people who have come to the temple and now have families; they credit their children to Drupka Kunley. The Bhutanese love of Kunley is the perfect representation of how the people regard their religion. They’re devout, but have a good sense of humour and love anyone with the ability to defy the odds.

Meditative retreats are still very common, and we see meditation huts that are still in regular use when we hike up to Khamsum temple, in the Punakha valley. Originally a retreat for monks and nuns, the current temple was built here by the queen mother of the fourth king in 2004 to ward off negative forces. The decor of this particular temple is unusual: all the gods are represented in their wrathful forms, and graphic artistic representations of intestines and flayed skin hang from the walls. The idea is that this would draw out the negative power of attachment (to people and possessions, as well as to pride and status), and it stands starkly at odds with the serene surroundings of the valley.

After taking in the view over the valley from the temple’s rooftop, we make our way back down, past people tending to their rice paddies and weeding their chilli fields. Here in central Bhutan, the climate is so mild that rice can be harvested two or three times a year; whereas in the cooler east, only once. Almost everything can be grown in Bhutan. Despite its small size, it offers diverse climates and in early spring cherry blossoms bloom and asparagus and strawberries are being harvested, with cucumber soon on its way. Chilli is ubiquitous: it’s considered a vegetable rather than a spice here, and you won’t go a meal without a bowl of chilli cheese, a beloved local dish as punchy as it is popular.

As we finish our hike, we come to Mo Chhu, considered to be the female river. She flows more calmly than her neighbour, the male river known as Pho Chhu. The latter is fierce, with jagged rocks that would dash a raft to pieces. But when you get up close, Mo Chhu is just as strong – many herbs grow along her banks. The two rivers meet in a rush of white below the walls of Punakha Dzong, the largest fortress in the region.

The Punakha Dzong temple in Punakha, Bhutan

Marcus Westberg

We wander around this megalithic structure, now used for administrative rather than military purposes, and watch burgundy-clad monks feed trout in the river from the bridge. In the golden light of the late afternoon sun, a young girl stands on the structure’s first level and launches a paper plane down to her friend. It floats haphazardly as it makes its way to the stone floor, wildly off course, while peals of laughter echo off the mud walls.

It’s these richly coloured vignettes that leave me entranced: a sensory flood of scenes that could have taken place 100 years ago. It’s easy to romanticise, but for all its traditions, Bhutan is keeping pace with the 21st century, for good and for bad. Most monks clutch smartphones (I’m told many happen to be TikTok stars).

I spot as many empty Coke bottles as I do birds on the hike up to Tiger’s Nest and along the roadside, there are big, handpainted signs bearing statements such as “drugs will ruin your life”. So no, Bhutan is not a pristine sustainability mecca, but it does hold a certain kind of magic and attracts a certain kind of traveller. One with deep pockets, that’s for sure, but also a traveller that seeks something more from their holiday than the average tourist.

As we pull up to the traditionally constructed airport – its upper storeys ornately carved out of wood rather than poured concrete – to make our departure, Dorji says, “When you get back home and you feel busy and stressed, think about how slowly we live here in Bhutan. Remember these pressures come from the negative energies of attachment, and take a moment to breathe.” As I think of my return to my everyday life and faint prickles of stress fizz at the corners of my mind, I turn to get one last glimpse of the epic vastness of the Himalayas, and conclude that Bhutan is really onto something.