Customized Bhutan tours from Bangladesh and India
Customized Bhutan tours from Bangladesh and India
Paro Taktsang — a monastery built onto a cliff face nine hundred metres above the Paro valley, and the image most people carry of Bhutan before they ever arrive.
Taktsang is a working monastery, not a viewpoint, and reaching it is part of the point. The path leaves from a car park in the Paro valley and climbs through pine forest hung with prayer flags, reaching a cafeteria at about the halfway mark where the monastery finally comes into full view across the gorge.
From there the trail continues to a staircase that drops into the gorge and climbs back up to the entrance. Four to five hours round trip is normal, unhurried. Shoes off and cameras away inside; the interior is the part photographs never capture anyway.
You need to be comfortable walking uphill for a couple of hours with breaks. It is a steady gradient on a maintained path rather than a scramble, but it is at altitude, which makes it harder than the same climb at sea level. Take it slowly and it is achievable for most reasonably active people.
Yes, and plenty of people do. The cafeteria viewpoint at the halfway mark gives you the classic view straight across to the monastery, and stopping there is a perfectly good outcome. Your guide will stay with whoever continues and whoever does not.
No. Horses cover the first stretch up to around the cafeteria. The final section involves a long staircase down into the gorge and back up to the monastery entrance, which has to be walked.
Walking shoes with grip, water, sunscreen and a layer — it can be warm climbing and cold at the top. Trousers or a long skirt and covered shoulders are needed to enter the monastery. Bags and cameras are left at a counter before you go inside.