Eight days in the Golden Thumb of the Kingdom for the two-day Jakar Tsechu, the most widely celebrated festival in Bumthang.
Highlights
Two full days of cham dances at the Jakar Tsechu
The thongdrel of Guru Rinpoche on the main festival day
Kurjey Lhakhang, three temples on a single cliff
Ura valley, the quietest of the Bumthang valleys
What is included
Licensed festival guide and a local festival host
Private vehicle for all eight days
Seven nights in heritage lodges, festival-week Jakar rooms held
All breakfasts, lunches and dinners
All permits, SDF and entry fees
Reserved seating at the cham dances and the kora
Airport transfers and a farewell blessing in Bumthang
Day-by-day itinerary
Day 01 — Into Bumthang, the valley of the four mountains Fly or drive to Bumthang and settle in Jakar with a day before the festival begins — deliberately, so that nothing is rushed. Evening is a walk through the main street to the Jakar Dzong, with the ring of sacred mountains going amber behind it, and dinner of red rice, buckwheat and Bumthang cheese…
Day 02 — Kurjey Lhakhang: three temples on a cliff The sacred centre of Bumthang, where Guru Rinpoche is said to have left a body imprint in the rock itself. Three temples — Kurjey, Wangchsek and Deche Pema — stand on one cliff above the river, and the walk between them passes through forest with the whole valley below.
Day 03 — Jakar Tsechu, first day: the thongdrel The festival proper begins, and in the clear October light of Bumthang it is a genuinely overwhelming few hours: the great thangka unveiled at dawn, the mask dancers working the ground in sequence, and thousands of people in a valley of a few thousand residents. Your host has reserved a place with…
Day 04 — Jakar Tsechu, second day: the kora The concluding day, with a full sequence of cham dances and the kora of lamas and laypeople around the Jakar Dzong. The afternoon is deliberately unstructured, and the evening is the festival's own — drums, horns and a fire in the courtyard of a Jakar family house that has hosted the tsechu for gen…
Day 05 — The Ura valley, the quietest of them all Out of the festival entirely and up the road to Ura, where wood-shingle villages sit among terraced fields and the road is bad on purpose. A walking day with visits to a weaving farm and a farmhouse lunch, then back to Jakar for a night with nothing happening, which after four festival days is the…
Day 06 — Takerthing Lhakhang and the hot springs Morning at Takerthing above Jakar, with its enormous gilded tree and relics kept in the upper chapel, then the hot springs at the Bumthang dairy farm, where you will sit in a mineral pool with snow on the ridges and steam on your glasses. The evening is a night of traditional music in the town.
Day 07 — Trongsa Dzong and the Golden Thumb A day in Trongsa, the dzong that guards the road to the east, with its tapering four-storey watchtower and the Ta Dzong museum beside it. Afternoon in the Deep Valley below town, where Bhutan's traditional lamas' houses are still being built rather than restored, ending back in Jakar.
Day 08 — Jakar to Paro and departure A morning flight or a long drive west back over the passes, with a stop at the Kurjey cliff temples if the road allows and time for tea. Paro by late afternoon for the flight home, festival photographs reviewed on the way, and the tsechu dates for the following year already pencilled in.