Licensed Bhutanese tour operator · Thimphu
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The short trip that still gets you up to Taktsang. Two valleys, three full days, and no drive longer than ninety minutes — built for travellers arriving with a week or less to give Bhutan.
Most first visits to Bhutan are decided by one photograph: a white monastery on a cliff, nine hundred metres above the valley floor. Paro Taktsang is the reason people come, and this itinerary gives it a full day with an early start, rather than squeezing it between transfers.
Around that day we have built the two valleys that hold most of the country’s history and almost all of its present. Paro is farmland, a seventeenth-century fortress and the only international runway in the kingdom. Thimphu, an hour east, is the only capital city in the world without a traffic light — a working town of civil servants, monks, weavers and coffee shops, where you can watch a state ritual in the morning and eat momos beside students in the afternoon.
You travel with a licensed Bhutanese guide and a private vehicle throughout. Nothing on this itinerary is rushed, and every long walk has an honest alternative if the altitude or the weather says otherwise.
This journey is quoted for your dates, your party size, your accommodation preference and anything you want changed. Government fees are shown as separate lines.
Written itinerary and full quotation usually within 24 hours. Nothing to pay to ask.
Written the way we would actually run it — with the drives, the walking hours and the altitude you sleep at, so you can judge the days for yourself. Anything here can be changed before you travel, and most of it can be changed on the morning.
The descent into Paro is flown by sight, between ridgelines, and it is the introduction the country deserves. Your guide meets you at the terminal. After lunch and a slow acclimatisation walk, we visit Kyichu Lhakhang — one of the oldest temples in the Himalaya, quiet, small, and still lit by butter lamps rather than electricity.
We start at seven, before the coaches. The climb gains roughly nine hundred metres over four kilometres of forest path, with a cafeteria at the halfway viewpoint and a long stair descent and re-ascent at the end. Most reasonably fit walkers take five to six hours round trip. Ponies are available for the first half. Afternoon free in Paro town.
A short drive east, stopping at Tamchog Lhakhang, reached across an iron chain-link bridge built by the fifteenth-century bridge-builder Thangtong Gyalpo. In Thimphu we visit the National Memorial Chorten, where elders circumambulate all day, then climb to Buddha Dordenma for the view back down the valley at dusk.
The takin preserve at Motithang first, for the national animal, then the Folk Heritage Museum and the National Institute for Zorig Chusum, where students spend six years learning thangka painting, wood carving and embroidery. We finish at Tashichho Dzong, seat of the government and the central monastic body, as the evening ceremony begins. Drive back to Paro.
Breakfast, then the short transfer to the airport. Flights out of Paro leave early, so most departures mean a start around six. Your guide sees you through check-in.
Photographs from the valleys this itinerary passes through. Ask us for more — we have a great many, and we would rather send you real ones than stock.
If yours is not here, send it — we answer properly and we will tell you if the trip is wrong for you.
It is a steady uphill on a wide dirt path, not a scramble — there is no exposure and no technical section. The difficulty is the altitude and the sustained gradient. If you can walk uphill for two hours at home without stopping every few minutes, you will manage it. Take it slowly, drink more than you think you need, and allow the full day.
It is long enough to see Paro and Thimphu properly and to climb Taktsang without rushing. It is not long enough to cross the Dochula into Punakha and back with any comfort. If you have eight days, take the Grand Western Circuit instead.
Bhutan charges every adult visitor US$100 per night, paid to the government and spent on healthcare, education and forest conservation. Children aged 6–12 pay half; children under 6 are exempt. It is a government fee, quoted as its own line in your quotation, and we file it with your visa application.
Read these before you enquire. Everything here is written so that nothing on the page above reads as a promise we cannot keep.
You sleep between the altitudes shown at the top of this page. Take the first day slowly, drink more than feels necessary, and tell your guide immediately about headache, nausea or unusual breathlessness.
Hot stone baths, farmhouse meals, archery, rafting, meditation sessions and monastery visits are arranged locally and are subject to availability, weather, river conditions and the monastic calendar. Where something cannot run on the day, your guide will offer an alternative.
Hotels are named in your final itinerary and quotation rather than on this page. Properties are certified by the Department of Tourism and are confirmed once your dates are held; if a substitution becomes necessary we will tell you before you travel and will not move you to a lower grade without asking.
International flight routes, frequencies and schedules vary by season and change at short notice. Current connections will be confirmed during trip planning. Leave a night either side of your Paro flights rather than booking a same-day onward connection.
The visa application fee is US$40 per person, one-time and non-refundable, and the Sustainable Development Fee applicable to your dates will be identified as a separate line in your quotation. Comprehensive travel insurance, particularly medical and emergency evacuation cover, is strongly recommended; it is not a government visa requirement.
Roads, weather, monastic calendars and local events can all move a day around. Your guide will discuss any change with you at the time, and the shape of the trip is yours to adjust before you travel and, for most days, on the morning.
Every journey is individually quoted. Tell us your travel dates, the number of travellers, your accommodation preference and anything you would like changed about the Paro & Thimphu Discovery itinerary, and we will prepare a detailed quotation for your trip.
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