A white monastery with gold roofs high on a dark cliff, half hidden in drifting cloud, pine forest falling away beneath it

The eastern Himalaya

Bhutan

The last of it is on foot.

Steep valleys, whitewashed walls, and a monastery you can only walk to. By private arrangement.

Paro Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest

Season: March to May, and September to November
Length: Around nine days
Party: Two to six, with your own guide
Held in the arrangement: Three valleys and the roads between them, your guide and driver throughout, every night's stay, and an unhurried day for the climb

The place

A kingdom of steep valleys, where the grandest thing in each was built to pray in.

The valleys lie between two and three thousand metres, and the road from one to the next goes over a pass hung with flags. In each stands a dzong: whitewashed walls as thick as a room, carved timber above, a courtyard within. Part fortress, part monastery, and still lived in.

Nothing here is hurried. You take your shoes off often. You learn to walk round things the right way. And the place you came for cannot be driven to.

A long white fortress with tiers of dark red and gold roofs standing on the bank where two rivers meet, bare trees along its wall and blue hills behind in haze — Punakha Dzong

The days

From the shadow of a timber gateway: a sunlit courtyard of white walls and carved, painted galleries, a tower with a gold spire beyond, and one figure in silhouette at the edge of the doorway — A dzong courtyard, Paro

First days

It begins with a doorway.

You step over a timber sill worn into a curve, out of the sun and into the thickness of the wall. For a moment it is dark and smells of old wood and butter lamps. Then the courtyard opens in front of you, white and red and gold, and far quieter than its size.

A single line of yellow, red and green prayer flags running down from the corner of the frame into white fog, a dark forested ridge just showing beneath

Between the valleys

The road goes up into the cloud.

Every pass has its flags, strung from tree to tree and left to the weather. You stop at the top, get out into the cold, and listen to them. On a clear day there are white peaks along the whole northern sky. On the other days there is this, and it is no worse.

Prayer flags on Chele La

Inside the walls

You are a guest in somebody's working day.

The dzongs are not kept for you. Robes cross the flagstones on their own errands, a door closes, a bell is struck somewhere you will not be going. You stand at the edge of it, lower your voice without being asked, and stay longer than you meant.

Two monks in red robes, seen from behind, stepping up to the carved doorway of a dzong across wet flagstones — At a dzong doorway, Bhutan

If this is the one, tell us when

A walker with a small pack, seen from behind in silhouette, climbing a dusty path cut into a bank of red earth, pines against a bright sky ahead

The last morning Then you walk up. Through the pines above Paro, for as long as it takes. Climb to the Tiger's Nest, a stretch at a time On the trail to the Tiger's Nest, Paro

Across the gorge

And then it is level with you.

For two hours it has been a white mark overhead, there and gone in the cloud. Now the path comes out on a ledge and the whole of it is across from you: roofs, windows, a cliff that should not hold a building at all. Nobody says much. You sit down.

The Tiger's Nest seen from across the gorge: white buildings with red and gold roofs stacked against a sheer rock face, pines growing from the cliff, cloud in the valley behind — Paro Taktsang from the trail

That is the shape of it: about nine days, three valleys, and the climb kept for the end, when your legs and your lungs are ready for it. The plan is drawn with you.

Plan your journey

The stay

Stone, timber, a stove, and the valley in the window.

You stay in small lodges built the way the valley builds: thick walls, painted beams, a handful of rooms. They are chosen with you, for their quiet and for what the window looks at.

What you remember is the evening after the climb. Boots off, legs heavy, tea in both hands, and the cliff you sat across from that morning somewhere up in the dark.

Strings of prayer flags across the foreground, and beyond them a deep forested valley under blue ridges — Prayer flags above the Paro valley

Walked up by someone who has done it a hundred times.

You travel with a Bhutanese guide from the first day to the last. Yours knows the hour a courtyard empties, which way round to walk, and when to say nothing at all. On the last morning they set a pace that feels too slow, and turns out to be exactly right.

Seen from above through a dark opening in a wall: five monks in red robes standing together on the pale flagstones of a courtyard — Monks in a courtyard, Bhutan

Field notesThe figures, for those who like them.

Daylight there today
Daylight in the middle of April
Daylight in the middle of October
Paro Taktsang: 27°30′N 089°22′E
The monastery: About 3,100 m
The valley floor at Paro: About 2,200 m

Choose your month Begin the climb

A wide valley in blue haze under a clear sky, ridges fading one behind another, and a dzong dark and small on the valley floor

Your invitation

Come on foot.

March to May for the valleys in flower. September to November for clear air and long views.

Plan your journey

Eight short questions, about two minutes. Then a letter in your own words.

The Thimphu valley