Happiness Bhutan

Land at Paro International Airport on the morning Drukair flight. Our guide meets you at the gate. The drive to Thimphu takes about an hour through the Paro valley and up through the river gorge. You will see the scale of the place before you see the capital: forested hills, a two-lane road following the Wang Chhu, farmhouses painted with the eight auspicious symbols. Check in at the hotel. Quiet afternoon. Dinner in Thimphu.

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The National Memorial Chorten in the morning — built in 1974 in memory of the third king and still the most visited place of daily worship in Thimphu. Elderly citizens walk circuits at dawn and dusk, prayer wheels turning. We watch without intruding. Then the Institute for Zorig Chusum: a government school teaching the thirteen traditional arts of Bhutan. We spend an hour watching students in the thangka painting and wood carving studios — young people learning the same techniques that decorated the dzongs four hundred years ago. Lunch near Norzin Lam. Afternoon at the farmers' market if it is a weekend, or a walk through the lower town if not. Dinner at the hotel.

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A morning at the National Library, some of them centuries old, held in a building designed to look like a traditional monastery. The scholars come here to study texts in Dzongkha and Choekey. We spend an hour with a librarian who will explain what the collection holds and what it is for. After lunch, a drive to the Tashichho Dzong — the seat of government and the summer residence of the Je Khenpo, the chief abbot. The dzong is open to visitors in the afternoon; the monks' quarters and the government offices are separated by the courtyard in a spatial arrangement that reflects the dual system of governance Bhutan has practiced since the seventeenth century. Dinner at the hotel.

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The drive from Thimphu to Punakha crosses the Dochula Pass at 3,100 metres. On a clear morning the 108 memorial chortens stand against the white peaks of the Himalaya and the view north goes as far as Gangkhar Puensum, the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. We stop for tea at the pass. The descent into Punakha is a drop of nearly a thousand metres in thirty minutes — the temperature rises, the vegetation thickens, banana trees appear at the roadside. Punakha is a warm valley and it grows rice twice a year. Afternoon check-in and a walk along the riverbank before dinner.

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Punakha Dzong in the morning, at the confluence of the Pho Chhu and Mo Chhu rivers, a position chosen deliberately so that both the rivers flow past the dzong walls and around the peninsula. It was the seat of the Bhutanese government until 1955 and is still the winter residence of the Je Khenpo. The assembly hall holds the embalmed body of Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the monk-ruler who unified Bhutan in the seventeenth century. We spend an unhurried hour inside. After lunch, we walk the suspension bridge over the Mo Chhu — a 160-metre wooden bridge swaying gently above the turquoise river — and continue into the valley on the far side. No destination, just the walk. Dinner at the hotel.

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A morning at leisure — the hotel terrace overlooks the river and most guests find it harder to leave than expected. Late morning, a drive into the upper Punakha valley to visit Khamsum Yulley Namgyal Chorten, a four-storey temple on a ridge above the paddy fields built in 1999. The climb takes thirty minutes through terraced rice fields; the view from the top takes in the whole valley. Lunch at a farmhouse below the chorten with a family who have farmed this land for three generations. They will cook what is in season — red rice, dried beef, fresh chillies and local cheese if you can manage the heat, orchards fruit if you cannot. Back to the hotel for a quiet afternoon.

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The drive back from Punakha retraces the Dochula Pass and descends into the Thimphu valley before turning west toward Paro. We stop in Thimphu for lunch and an hour in the town, then continue to Paro in the early afternoon. The Paro valley is broader and drier than Punakha — the light is different here, flatter and more silver. Check in to the hotel. Dinner in the valley.

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We start at first light. The hike to Taktsang Monastery — Tiger's Nest — is three hours up at a measured pace, through blue pine and rhododendron, with the monastery appearing intermittently above through the tree line, closer each time. The monastery is built directly into a vertical cliff at 3,120 metres; the cave inside it is where Guru Rinpoche meditated for three months in the eighth century. We spend an hour inside, then begin the descent. Lunch at a farmhouse below the trail. Long slow afternoon at the hotel.

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A day with no fixed schedule. Options we can arrange: Rinpung Dzong and the National Museum in the watchtower above it; a walk through Paro town to the weekend market; a visit to Kyichu Lhakhang, one of the 108 temples built in a single day by the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century; or no plan at all and a morning on the hotel terrace. The afternoon is yours. Dinner at the hotel together.

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Breakfast at the hotel. Our guide and driver bring you to Paro International Airport for your morning flight. We send a postcard from Thimphu after you leave — it arrives in about three weeks.

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