Editor’s Letter: Bhutan Travel Issue

There are countries you visit and countries that seem to visit you, slowly, long after you have come home. For many of us at Travel Viewpoint, Bhutan is the second kind. This month’s issue is devoted to the small Himalayan kingdom wedged between India and Tibet, a place of fortress-monasteries, prayer flags snapping in the wind, chilli-laden dinners and valleys so quiet you can hear a river from a kilometre away.

Why Bhutan, and why February

February is a season of clear skies in western Bhutan. The air in Paro and Thimphu is cold and dry, the mountains often stand sharp against a blue sky, and the black-necked cranes that winter in the Phobjikha valley are usually still there before they fly north. In the lower, warmer Punakha valley, the first hints of spring arrive early, and the great dzong at the meeting of two rivers is at its most photogenic. It is a fine month for anyone willing to wrap up warm in exchange for crisp light and fewer crowds.

We should also be honest about timing. Bhutan has been cautious and deliberate about tourism for decades, and its borders and entry rules have changed in recent times, including a long closure during the pandemic and a revised Sustainable Development Fee for visitors when it reopened. Rules for Indian travellers differ from those for other nationalities. Please treat this issue as inspiration and background, and confirm the current entry rules, fees and permits with the Department of Tourism and your tour operator before you plan anything.

What is inside

We start in Paro, the valley town most visitors see first, home to the country’s only international airport and the famous Tiger’s Nest monastery clinging to a cliff above the valley floor. Our guide to where to travel in Bhutan widens the view to Thimphu, Punakha, Bumthang and beyond, and helps you decide how much of the country to try on one trip.

Wildlife gets its own feature. Bhutan has kept a large share of its land under forest and set aside a network of protected areas, and our piece introduces the takin, the red panda, the golden langur and the black-necked crane, along with the parks where you might glimpse them. Our food writer, meanwhile, has eaten her way through ema datshi, the national dish of chillies and cheese, plus momos, red rice and butter tea, and lived to tell the tale.

Culture runs through everything in Bhutan, from the national dress worn to offices and schools to the masked tsechu festivals held in dzong courtyards. Our article on Bhutanese culture explains the basics: Buddhism’s place in daily life, the architecture of dzongs and farmhouses, and the idea of Gross National Happiness that the country has made famous. For balance, our pros and cons piece does not pretend Bhutan suits everybody, and our guide to travel documents for Indian tourists sets out what paperwork you will need at the border or the airport.

Three new pieces round out the issue. The first follows a single route, Paro to Thimphu to Punakha, that explains a great deal about the country in a few days on the road. The second suggests how to spend three days in Paro and Thimphu without turning them into a checklist. And the third, perhaps the most useful, lists what we think you can skip on a first trip so that you have time for what matters.

Travelling the Bhutanese way

Bhutan asks something of its visitors, and we think that is a good thing. It asks you to dress modestly in temples and dzongs, to walk clockwise around chortens and prayer wheels, to leave the drone at home unless you have permission, and to accept that some places are simply not open to you. It asks you to slow down on mountain roads that wind for hours between valleys. And it asks you to pay, through its fees, for the forests, schools and clinics that tourism is meant to support.

In return, it offers something increasingly rare: a sense that a place has chosen what it wants to be. You will see it in the traditional facades required on new buildings, in the absence of traffic lights in Thimphu, where a policeman still directs traffic by hand at the main junction, and in the prayer flags strung across every high pass.

What we hope you will do

If you go, give yourself time. Two valleys, properly seen, are worth more than five glimpsed from a car window. Talk to your guide; Bhutanese guides are usually generous with stories about their villages, their families and the festivals they grew up with. Try at least one farmhouse meal and one hot stone bath. Climb to Tiger’s Nest early, slowly and with water, and spend a few minutes inside in silence before you hurry back down.

And watch for small things. A monk on a mobile phone. A prayer wheel turned by a stream. A schoolchild in a gho bowing to a passing elder. These are the moments that will stay with you.

Getting there from India

For readers in India, Bhutan is unusually easy to reach. Flights from a handful of Indian cities land at Paro, and the approach between ridges is a memorable start to any trip. Many Indian travellers still prefer the road, crossing at Phuentsholing from Jaigaon in West Bengal and driving up through the hills to Thimphu, a long but beautiful journey that shows how quickly the plains give way to forest and cloud. Whichever way you arrive, carry the original identity documents your operator asks for and leave a margin in your plans for paperwork and weather.

A word of thanks

As ever, this issue was built by a small team and a generous community of readers. Thank you to everyone who wrote in with Bhutan memories, corrections and suggestions. If you travel there this year, please write to us; we would love to hear what you found, and what we got wrong.

Here is to unhurried journeys and the happiness they bring.

Warmly,

Khushi Anand, Editor