Bhutan in Festival Season

The journey.

For a few days each season, Bhutan's great fortresses fill with colour: masked cham dances, whirling brocade, and entire valleys arriving in their finest kira and gho. Timing a journey to a tsechu changes everything.

The festival A dzong courtyard at festival time with a scholar who reads the dances' meanings, families picnicking on the flagstones, and the unfurling of a giant thangka at dawn.

The valleys Around it, the kingdom at its gentlest: lodge-to-lodge across two valleys, archery with locals, hot-stone baths, and prayer flags doing their patient work at altitude.

The last Himalayan kingdom, on its happiest days.