Journey
Bhutan — the dzongs and the Drukpa
The one Himalayan state that was never colonised, never part of British India, and never Tibetan — and the only country in the world where the government still sits inside a monastery. Its religion came the long way: from Nālandā and Bihar to Marpa, who crossed the Himalaya repeatedly to fetch it, then through Tibet to the Drukpa Kagyu school these valleys are named after. Its script came from India too, a Gupta-period Brahmi derivative by way of the Tibetan alphabet. What Bhutan made of it is its own: the dzong, a fortress and a monastery and an administration in one whitewashed mass, invented by a refugee lama in the 1620s who turned a set of valleys into a state and whose death was then concealed for fifty years so the state could keep issuing his orders.
Stops (12)
- Kyichu Lhakhang · 7th century, by tradition
The oldest thing in Bhutan, or the oldest claim to be so: the inner shrine at Kyichu in the Paro valley is ascribed to Songtsen Gampo, the Tibetan king whose reign brought Buddhism over the Himalaya and who is credited with a ring of temples pinning down a demoness across the region. The Jowo image is held to be of that date. A second temple was added beside it in 1968 by the Queen Mother, so the courtyard holds two buildings thirteen centuries apart — and two orange trees that every Bhutanese account mentions before the shrine.
- Jampa Lhakhang, Bumthang · Maitreya, and the midnight dance
The other temple ascribed to Songtsen Gampo, in the Bumthang valley, dedicated to the Buddha yet to come. Its October festival is among the least tidied-up in the country: the mewang, in which people run beneath a burning gate, and the tercham, a masked dance performed naked at midnight for fertility. The day dances are what visitors are shown; the valley regards the midnight one as the reason the festival works.
- Kurjey Lhakhang, Bumthang · the body print
Three temples in a row over a rock said to carry Padmasambhava's body print — kur je means exactly that. Bumthang is where Bhutan's account of its own conversion begins: a local king, Sindhu Raja, invited him to cure an affliction, and the subjugation of the local deity Shelging Karpo is the founding story of Buddhism here. The kings of Bhutan are cremated at these temples, and a cypress beside them is said to have grown from Padmasambhava's stick.
- Paro Taktsang · 1692
The monastery on a granite cliff nine hundred metres above the Paro valley, built around the cave where Padmasambhava is held to have meditated for three years, three months, three weeks, three days and three hours — having flown there from Tibet on the back of a tigress. It is the most important pilgrimage in Bhutan, and it burned almost completely in 1998, so the building in every photograph is younger than the photographs that made it famous.
- Ngawang Namgyal (the Zhabdrung) · 1616–1651
A Drukpa Kagyu hierarch who fled a Tibetan succession dispute and made a country out of the valleys he landed in. Over thirty-five years he built the dzongs, beat off repeated Tibetan and Mongol invasions, wrote the Tsa Yig code, and set up the dual government — a Zhabdrung for religion, a Desi for administration — that ran Bhutan until 1907. His death about 1651 was then concealed for more than fifty years, the state continuing to issue his orders and admitting nobody to his chamber.
- Simtokha Dzong · 1629
The first dzong he built, at the junction below Thimphu where the roads from the west and the south meet, and therefore the prototype for every fortress-monastery after it. It was attacked almost at once by a coalition of rivals with Tibetan allies, and held. Three hundred slate carvings of saints line the passage behind its central tower. It now houses the institute where Dzongkha and classical Chöke are taught, so the oldest dzong is where the language is kept.
- Punakha Dzong · 1637, and 1907
Built at the confluence of the Pho Chhu and Mo Chhu and the seat of government until 1955 — the country's most consequential building. The first king was crowned here in 1907 and the treaty with British India signed here in 1910. It has burned or flooded at least seven times, most recently in 1994 when a glacial lake burst up the Pho Chhu, so the building has spent much of its life being repaired by the state it houses.
- Trongsa Dzong · the gate in the middle
The largest dzong in Bhutan, strung along a ridge above the Mangde Chhu at the country's narrow waist, with the only east–west road routed deliberately through its courtyard so that traffic could be stopped, taxed and inspected inside the building. Whoever held it controlled movement between the halves of the country, which is why its governor became the most powerful office in Bhutan — and why the first king came from it. The crown prince still holds the title.
- Tashichho Dzong, Thimphu · since 1952
The dzong above Thimphu, rebuilt after an 1870 fire and since 1952 the seat of government: throne room, ministries, and the summer residence of the Je Khenpo, the chief abbot, inside one set of walls. Bhutan is the only state in the world whose government sits in a monastery, with monks and civil servants crossing the same courtyards. The 1960s rebuilding used no nails and no written plans, under a master carpenter.
- Gangteng Monastery & Phobjikha · three hundred birds
A Nyingma monastery of 1613 above a wide glacial bowl at three thousand metres, where the black-necked cranes come down from Tibet each November and leave in February. They are treated as an omen rather than a resource: the valley went without grid electricity for years and was then wired underground so the cables would not kill them. The cranes are said to circle the monastery three times on arriving and again on leaving, and the valley watches for it.
- The Drukpa Kagyu · from about 1180
The school the country is named after — Druk Yul, land of the thunder dragon — and the line by which Indian Buddhism reached these valleys. It descends from Tilopa and Naropa in eastern India, through Marpa the translator who crossed the Himalaya repeatedly to fetch texts, then Milarepa, Gampopa, and Tsangpa Gyare who founded it. Naropa taught at Nālandā, so a Himalayan state religion traces its authority to a Magadhan monastery.
- Dzongkha and the Bhutanese script · the language of the fortress
Bhutan's national language, a Tibetic speech of the western valleys, written in an alphabet that came from India: the Tibetan script was devised in the seventh century from an Indic model, generally a Gupta-period Brahmi derivative, and Bhutan writes it in two hands of its own — formal ucen and the cursive joyi used by the dzongs. Dzong kha means the language of the fortress: it spread as the speech of the administration, not of any village.