Punakha Drubchen and Tshechu

Land at Paro International Airport on the morning Drukair flight. Our team meets you at the gate and we drive east to Thimphu — roughly an hour along the Wang Chhu river valley. Check in to your hotel, then a slow afternoon in the capital: the weekend market if the timing aligns, or simply the streets around the Tashichho Dzong as the day winds down. Dinner in Thimphu.

Meals

L, D

After breakfast we drive the Dochu La pass — at 3,116 metres, with 108 chortens on the ridge and Himalayan peaks north of the cloud line on a clear day — then descend into Punakha. The valley opens below you as you come down, wide and warm and green in a way Thimphu is not. Stop at Chimi Lhakhang, the fertility temple on a small hill above the farmland, before arriving at the dzong. The bridge over the Mo Chhu is narrow enough that you cross it on foot. We walk into the courtyard and you see where the next four days will happen. Dinner by the river.

Meals

B, L, D

We arrive at Punakha Dzong in the morning. The Drubchen re-enacts the 1639 battle in which Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal and his forces repelled a Tibetan and Mongolian invasion. Monks dressed as 17th-century soldiers, cavalry in armour, the central courtyard as the battlefield. It is loud and physical and completely unlike a dance ceremony — the energy in the crowd is different, more electric, with a pride in it that belongs specifically to Bhutanese people watching their own history performed. We stay for the main sequence, then have lunch in the valley. Afternoon free at the hotel.

Meals

B, L, D

The Drubchen is over; the Tshechu begins. We return to the dzong before the gates open. The courtyard is familiar now — you have your bearings from yesterday — and the shift from battle drama to sacred dance is striking. The opening dances include the Sha Marpo, performed by monks who learned it as boys and have performed it every year since. We stay through midday. Long lunch, then an afternoon boat trip up the Mo Chhu to a weaving village — women working at floor looms in the ground-floor rooms of their farmhouses, the same patterns they have been weaving since before the roads came.

Meals

B, L, D

Another early start. Today the dzong is fullest — local families from across Punakha and Wangdue Phodrang come in their finest kira and gho for the middle days of the tshechu. The dances include the Peling Ging and Tshokling and the Dance of the Lords of the Cremation Grounds. We stay longer today and let the rhythm of the ceremony find you. Lunch in the dzong compound with the crowd still around us. Free afternoon.

Meals

B, L, D

The tshechu is finished. The monks have gone back to their duties; the dzong belongs to itself again. We go in the morning, when the courtyards are empty and the light comes down from the clerestory windows into the central tower. Your guide walks you through the rooms that are normally inaccessible during the festival — the main assembly hall, the altar chamber, the Zhabdrung's sanctuary at the rear. Then a slow afternoon in the valley: the mustard fields north of the dzong, the chortens on the ridge above Lobesa, or simply the hotel terrace with the river below. Dinner unhurried.

Meals

B, L, D

We drive back through the Dochu La in the morning — often clear at this hour, the 108 chortens and the Himalayan horizon before you — then continue west through Thimphu to Paro International Airport. Our team stays with you until you are through the gate. We send a postcard from Thimphu after you leave.

Meals

B