Eight nights, two valleys, and the climb saved for last

Arrive Paro

The descent is the first thing anybody remembers about Bhutan and there is no point pretending otherwise: the aircraft turns between ridges with the valley floor below the wingtips and lands going one way because it can only land going one way. Your guide and driver meet you outside; both are Bhutanese, licensed, and with you for the whole journey.

The afternoon is deliberately light. Rinpung Dzong, which is a fortress, a monastery and a district administration in one building, and the Kyichu Lhakhang, which is among the oldest temples in the country and still very much in use. Then an early night, because the valley is high and most people feel it.

Paro to Thimphu

A short drive east, about an hour, following the river down and then up the other valley. Thimphu has no traffic lights. The junction in the middle of the city is still worked by a policeman in a box, and the arrangement has outlived more than one attempt to replace it with a signal.

The afternoon is the Buddha Dordenma above the city, then the National Textile Museum, which is the single best hour in Thimphu for understanding what is on everybody around you. Bhutanese dress is not costume; the kira and the gho are daily wear, required in dzongs, government offices and schools, and the weaving that goes into a good one takes months.

Thimphu

A morning at the Institute for Zorig Chusum, the school of the thirteen traditional arts, where students spend years on painting, embroidery, woodcarving and casting. Watch rather than shop; the shop at the front is fine and the classrooms are the reason to be there.

The afternoon is a walk rather than a building: up the valley to Cheri or Tango, a monastery on a wooded hillside reached on foot in about an hour of steady climbing. This is also the sensible altitude rehearsal for day 8. If the weekend falls here, the Thimphu market takes the morning instead and the walk moves.

Thimphu to Punakha over the Dochula

East out of Thimphu and up to the Dochula, a pass with a field of chortens on it and, on a clear winter morning, the eastern Himalaya laid out along the northern horizon. On a cloudy one you see the chortens and the prayer flags and nothing else. We stop for as long as the weather deserves.

Then down, a long way down, into a valley warm enough for rice and bananas. Punakha Dzong stands at the confluence of the Pho Chhu and the Mo Chhu, reached across a covered wooden bridge, and it is the building most people rate above every other in the country. Go late in the afternoon when the light is on the whitewash.

Punakha

The walk to the Khamsum Yulley Namgyal chorten takes the morning: across a suspension bridge, along the river, then up through the terraces for about an hour to a temple built by the queen mother with a view back down the whole valley. It is the prettiest ordinary walk in Bhutan and it is not hard.

The afternoon is Chimi Lhakhang, reached on a path through the fields, and the village around it, which is decorated in a way that surprises visitors who have read about Bhutan only as a Buddhist kingdom. Your guide will explain the Drukpa Kunley story and will not be embarrassed about it.

Punakha back to Paro

Back over the Dochula and west, four to five hours with stops, which is the longest driving day of the journey and still an easy one by the standards of the Himalaya. The road is good, it is narrow, and it is being widened in places, which occasionally costs half an hour.

Arrive Paro in the afternoon. Nothing else is scheduled, on purpose: tomorrow is the day that exists to be given away.

Paro, the day held in reserve

This day exists to absorb a delayed arrival. If your inbound flight lost a day to cloud, the schedule has already used this one up and you still climb to Taktsang tomorrow. If it did not, you get a free day in the Paro valley and here is what we would do with it.

Drive up the valley to the ruined Drukgyel dzong, burnt in the 1950s and reconstructed since, which stands where the road to Tibet used to matter. Then a farmhouse lunch in a working house rather than a set-up one, and a hot stone bath in the afternoon if you want one, which is a wooden tub, river stones heated in a fire and dropped in through a partition, and artemisia in the water. It is a genuine local practice and it is also the correct preparation for tomorrow.

The Tiger's Nest

Leave at seven to be walking by half past. Taktsang is built onto a cliff face above the valley and the path climbs steadily through pine to a cafeteria at roughly the halfway point, then continues to a viewpoint, then drops down a long flight of stone steps and climbs back up the other side to the monastery door. Most people take two to three hours up and a little less down.

It is not technical and it is not a scramble. It is simply a long climb at altitude, and the reason we put it on day 8 rather than day 2 is that by now you have had a week of valley air and an hour of climbing at Cheri behind you. Ponies are available for part of the ascent and not for the descent, which is the half that hurts; we tell people that before they book the pony.

Bags, cameras and phones are left at the entrance to the monastery itself. The interior is the part nobody photographs and the part everybody describes.

Depart Paro

Breakfast and the short drive to the airport. Departures out of Paro go early, in the daylight window, which is why the last night is spent in the valley rather than anywhere else. We do not book an onward international connection on the same day and we will explain why if you ask us to.