Experience Bhutanese Craftsmanship Come to Life at Zhiwaling Heritage

shrine visit

buddhist temple

+12

Curated & Hosted By

Zhiwaling Heritage

Location

Paro

Bhutan

Duration

5 Days/4 Nights

Price Starts At

TBA

About The Journey

Zhiwaling Heritage gives you a way into Bhutan that begins with the place itself. Built in the style of a traditional Bhutanese manor, the hotel brings together timber architecture, local craftsmanship and details that connect your stay to the country's cultural inheritance. Its shrine room, made with timbers more than 450 years old, offers a particularly tangible link to the past, while the cantilever bridge and Gawa Restaurant bring Bhutanese ingredients and hospitality into the present.

From this base in Paro, the valley and its surrounding mountains become part of your stay. Over four nights, you can walk towards Taktsang and Dzongdrakha Monastery, explore Paro Dzong, spend time at the Choki Arts & Crafts School in Thimphu, or climb to Chele La for views across the Himalayas. Back at Zhiwaling, evenings bring butter tea, local folk songs and dinners prepared around the region's flavours.

We look forward to sharing these days with you and introducing you to Bhutan through its places, wonderful people and traditions.

CURATED & HOSTED BY

Zhiwaling Heritage

Paro, Bhutan

View All

STANDARD PRICE

TBA

4 Nights / 5 Days, Double occupancy

The moments that make

this journey

memorable

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Light a Butter Lamp in Zhiwaling's Shrine Room

Shrine Visit

Zhiwaling Heritage

The shrine room on Zhiwaling's upper floor is built from 450-year-old timbers reclaimed from Gangtey Monastery, founded in 1613 above the Phobjikha valley in central Bhutan. Guru Rinpoche sits at the centre of the altar, with the treasure-revealer Pema Lingpa on his left and Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, who unified Bhutan, on his right. You come here straight from the airport, before you have seen your room, and light a butter lamp to set on the altar. It takes a few minutes and asks nothing of you beyond quiet. The same three figures recur over the days that follow, in almost every temple and fortress you walk into.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Visit Kyichu Lhakhang, Built on a Demoness's Foot

Buddhist Temple Temple Visit

Zhiwaling Heritage

In 659 the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo set out to build 108 temples across the Himalaya, each placed to pin down a giant demoness whose body lay across the land, obstructing the spread of Buddhism. Kyichu Lhakhang holds down her left foot. The Bhutanese historian Karma Phuntsho has noted that, for most Bhutanese, the country's history effectively begins with this story. The temple sits close to Zhiwaling in the Paro valley: the original Jowo shrine, a second temple added alongside in 1968 by Queen Ashi Kesang, and a courtyard of prayer wheels. Two orange trees there are said to bear fruit all year. Cover shoulders and knees; this is a working temple.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Walk Simtokha Dzong, the Zhabdrung's First Fortress

Traditional Architecture

Zhiwaling Heritage

Simtokha is usually read as 'on top of the demon'. The story goes that Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal banished a demoness who preyed on travellers into the rock on this ridge, then built the dzong around it in 1629 to keep her there. It was the first fortress he built in Bhutan, and the model for the combined monastery-and-government dzongs that followed at Punakha, Paro and elsewhere. It stands 5 kilometres south of Thimphu, on the old boundary of the Paro, Thimphu and Wangdue Phodrang regions, and still houses a Dzongkha language school. Beside the later dzongs it is small and plain, which is the point: you are looking at the prototype.

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Paro, Bhutan

Meet the Takin, Bhutan's National Animal

Animal Conservation

Zhiwaling Heritage

The Bhutanese tell it this way: in the 15th century Drukpa Kunley, the Divine Madman, was asked to perform a miracle. He demanded a whole cow and a whole goat for lunch, ate both, then set the goat's head on the cow's skeleton and told it to get up. The takin, with its goat face and cattle bulk, has been the national animal since 2005. The Motithang preserve began as a small zoo; when the fourth king ordered the animals released, the takin refused to leave and wandered Thimphu's streets looking for food. So they were given 3.4 fenced hectares of forest on the city's edge. It is an enclosure, not the wild. Don't feed them.

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Paro, Bhutan

Watch the Thirteen Arts Taught at Choki School

Local Crafts Local Art

Zhiwaling Heritage

After he retired from the civil service, the painter Dasho Choki Dorji, who had helped set up Bhutan's national arts institute in the 1970s, began taking in children who could not meet that institute's entry requirements. He taught them at his house, and fed and lodged them there too. In 1999 this became the Choki Traditional Art School, in the Kabesa valley north of Thimphu, giving free training to young people from disadvantaged families in the zorig chusum, Bhutan's thirteen traditional arts. You move through the workshops while students work: mask making, bamboo craft, woodwork, printing, prayer flags, calligraphy. The pieces in the school shop are theirs, and what you buy supports the school.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Walk to Dzongdrakha, Paro's Other Cliff Temple

Monastery Visit

Zhiwaling Heritage

Local tradition holds that Guru Rinpoche, arriving in Bhutan in the 8th century, stopped at Dzongdrakha before going on to the cliff at Taktsang. The morning follows him in reverse. First you drive to the foot of the Tiger's Nest trail to look up at the monastery on its rock face; then you cross the valley to Bondey village. A 20 to 30-minute walk through pine forest brings you to four small shrines built into the cliff, for Tara, Guru Rinpoche, Maitreya and Tsheringma, goddess of long life. The crystal chorten here was named Karmogyel because it was said to tremble on auspicious days. Below you, the whole Paro valley.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Try Bhutanese Archery and Darts at Zhiwaling

Archery

Zhiwaling Heritage

Bhutan made archery its national sport in 1971, the year it joined the United Nations, and the game played in its villages has little to do with the Olympic version. Targets stand around 145 metres apart, more than twice the Olympic range, and are roughly the size of a paperback. The opposing team gathers near the target and heckles while you draw; when an arrow lands, the archer's teammates sing and dance. Khuru, the dart game played alongside it, uses heavy wooden darts tipped with a nail, thrown overarm at a small target 10 to 20 metres off. Back at Zhiwaling in the afternoon, you play a friendly round of each.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Share Butter Tea and Folk Songs by the Firepit

Local Culture

Zhiwaling Heritage

The folk songs of the Paro, Thimphu and Punakha valleys include zhungdra, 'music of the centre', which took shape around the dzongs in the 17th century. Its long, ornamented vocal lines are hard even for trained singers, and its lyrics, though secular, often carry Buddhist allegory: one well-known song is sung by a man remembering his former life as a yak. In the evening at Zhiwaling, village artists perform gney-lu, folk songs, around the stone firepit. You sit close to the fire with a cup of suja, butter tea made by boiling tea leaves with salt and butter, savoury rather than sweet. At 2,350 metres, the evenings are cool enough to want both.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Drive Up to Chele La, Bhutan's Highest Road

Mountain Views

Zhiwaling Heritage

On a clear morning from Chele La you can see Jomolhari, 7,326 metres on the border with Tibet, held to be the home of Jomo, one of the five Tsheringma sister goddesses, bound by a vow to Guru Rinpoche to protect this land. At 3,988 metres, the pass between the Paro and Haa valleys is the highest point on any road in Bhutan, reached by a narrow road built in the 1990s that climbs through pine, oak and rhododendron. At the top, strings of prayer flags run along the ridge and tall white flags stand on poles. You walk a short way along the ridge and look down into Haa. Go early; cloud often closes in later.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Walk Into Paro Dzong, Fortress on a Heap of Jewels

Architectural Design

Zhiwaling Heritage

Rinpung Dzong means 'fortress on a heap of jewels'. Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal had an older fortress on the site taken down in 1644 and consecrated this one in 1646, while Tibetan armies were still pushing into the valley; its sloping walls and single entrance were built for defence. In 1905 a British political officer found old stone-throwing catapults stored in its rafters. A fire in 1907 destroyed most of its statues and relics, but not the great thongdrel, the appliqué banner of Guru Rinpoche still unrolled before dawn on the last day of the spring Paro Tshechu. Monks and district officials share it today. Cover shoulders and knees.

STAR PARTNER

Paro, Bhutan

Soak in a Bhutanese Hot Stone Bath

Hot Stone Bath Traditional Healing

Zhiwaling Heritage

A dotsho, the Bhutanese stone bath, was traditionally built on a riverbank outside the house, because the river supplied both the water and the stones. At Zhiwaling the stones still come from the Paro river. They are heated in a wood fire until they glow red, then lowered into a compartment at one end of a wooden tub, behind a partition that keeps them off your skin. The water hisses as they go in, and artemisia, known locally as khempa, is scattered across the surface with other local herbs. Bhutanese traditional medicine holds that the minerals released from the stones ease stiff joints. After a day at altitude, it is the right place to end up.

DAY-BY-DAY

Your

Itinerary

DAY

Morning

‣

Meet your guide at Paro International Airport for a transfer to Zhiwaling Heritage, your home for the next four nights.

‣

On arrival, offer a butter lamp in the shrine room, built with timbers over 450 years old.

‣

Check in, settle into your room and ease into your stay in Bhutan.

Afternoon

‣

Enjoy lunch at the resort’s distinctive cantilever bridge.

‣

Visit Kyichu Lhakhang, one of Bhutan’s oldest and most sacred temples.

‣

Explore the lively streets of Paro town before returning to the hotel to relax.

Evening

‣

Enjoy dinner at Gawa Restaurant, with a meet-the-chef interaction and stories behind Bhutanese cuisine.

‣

Return to your room to unwind after the day’s explorations.

DAY

Morning

‣

Travel to Thimphu and visit Simtokha Dzong, one of Bhutan’s oldest fortresses and an important centre of Buddhist learning.

‣

Head to the Takin Preserve to see Bhutan’s national animal and learn about its place in the country’s culture.

Afternoon

‣

Enjoy lunch at Ascent, Zhiwaling Heritage’s sister property in Thimphu.

‣

Visit Choki Arts and Crafts School to discover traditional Bhutanese crafts, from mask-making and woodwork to calligraphy and prayer flags.

‣

Return to Paro for a relaxed evening, with time to rest and acclimatise.

Evening

‣

Spend the evening at leisure.

DAY

Morning

‣

Drive to the base of Taktsang (Tiger’s Nest) for views of the iconic monastery perched on a cliffside.

‣

Visit Dzongdrakha Monastery, often called the ‘Mini Tiger’s Nest’, built into a limestone cliff above Bondey village.

‣

Take a gentle 20–30-minute walk through pine forests, with beautiful views of Paro Valley.

Afternoon

‣

Head into Paro town for lunch, followed by a walk through local shops for Bhutanese souvenirs and gifts.

‣

Return to the resort for a friendly game of archery and darts, two much-loved traditional sports in Bhutan.

Evening

‣

Gather around the stone firepit as evening falls, with local butter tea under the stars.

‣

Enjoy folk songs (gney-lu) performed by village artists, offering a glimpse into Bhutan’s musical traditions.

DAY

Morning

‣

Drive up to Chele La Pass, Bhutan’s highest motorable pass at 3,988 metres, surrounded by colourful prayer flags and alpine forests.

‣

Enjoy panoramic views of snow-capped peaks, including Mt. Jomolhari, and enjoy a short mountain stroll.

‣

Return to the valley after relishing the mountain scenery.

Afternoon

‣

Visit Paro Dzong (Rinpung Dzong), an iconic fortress-monastery, and discover its history and traditional Bhutanese architecture.

‣

Head into Paro town for lunch before returning to the resort.

‣

Spend the rest of the day at leisure, with time for a spa treatment or a traditional Bhutanese hot stone bath with massage.

Evening

‣

Take time to freshen up and relax before your farewell dinner at the resort.

‣

Enjoy a special farewell dinner by Soethab, celebrating the experiences and memories of your stay.

‣

Return to your room to unwind and pack for the journey home the following morning.

DAY

Morning

‣

Enjoy breakfast at Zhiwaling Heritage before checking out.

‣

Transfer to Paro International Airport for your onward journey, bringing your four-night stay in Bhutan to a wonderful close.

Afternoon

Evening

Starting Package Price

STANDARD PRICE

TBA

4 Nights / 5 Days, Double occupancy

Inclusions

TBA

Exclusions

TBA

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Zhiwaling Heritage?

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