Punakha Dzong: Bhutan’s Palace of Great Happiness at Two Rivers

Punakha Dzong stands on a narrow spit of land where two glacial rivers meet, its whitewashed walls rising straight from the water and its golden roofs catching the light of a valley far warmer than the mountain passes above it. For more than three centuries it was the seat of Bhutan’s government, and it remains the winter home of the country’s monastic body, which makes it less a monument than a working institution that happens to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the Himalaya. On Odyssey Traveller’s Tour of Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Bhutan, the small group reaches it on the ninth day, after crossing the Dochu La pass from Thimphu. This guide explains why the dzong sits where it does, what it was built to do, and how to make the most of an afternoon inside its walls.

Why Punakha Dzong sits where two rivers meet

The Punakha Valley is formed by two rivers that descend separately from the northern mountains and join just below the town. The Bhutanese name them as a pair: the Pho Chhu, the “father” or male river, and the Mo Chhu, the “mother” or female river. The dzong occupies the tongue of land between them at the point of confluence, so that water flows past it on both long sides and meets beyond its southern tip.

The choice was practical before it was symbolic. A building bounded by two fast rivers can only be approached from a narrow front, and the only practical crossing was a bridge that could be defended or withdrawn. The valley floor, at around 1,250 metres, is also low and sheltered, with a mild winter climate that suited a court and a monastic community looking for somewhere to spend the cold months away from the high valleys.

Bhutanese tradition supplies a second reason. A prophecy attributed to Guru Rinpoche, the eighth-century teacher credited with bringing Buddhism to the Himalaya, foretold that a man named Namgyal would come to a hill shaped like a sleeping elephant. The ridge above the confluence was read as that elephant, and the dzong was placed at the tip of its trunk. A small temple, the Dzong Chung, already stood on the site in the fourteenth century, holding a statue of the Buddha that is still kept in the complex today.

How long is the drive from Thimphu to Punakha?

About three hours, including a stop at the top of the pass. The road climbs out of Thimphu to Dochu La at 3,050 metres, where the group pauses for a hot drink and, on a clear day, a long view of the Eastern Himalaya, before descending some 1,800 metres into the valley. The change is felt as much as seen: pine and rhododendron forest gives way to banana trees, cactus and rice terraces, and a jacket needed at the pass is usually off by the time the dzong comes into view. The stop itself, with its 108 memorial chortens, is covered in our guide to the Dochula Pass and its chortens.

A fortress, a monastery and a seat of government

To understand why Punakha Dzong looks as it does, it helps to know who built it and why he needed it. Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal was a leading lama of the Drukpa lineage who left Tibet in 1616 after a dispute over the recognition of his religious authority. He brought with him the Rangjung Kharsapani, a revered self-arising image of the bodhisattva of compassion, and Tibetan forces spent the next three decades trying to retrieve it and him. Over that period the Zhabdrung unified the western valleys into a single state and built a network of dzongs to hold it together.

Punakha, begun in 1637 and consecrated the following year, was the second of these and is now the second oldest and second largest dzong in Bhutan. He named it Pungthang Dewa Chhenbi Phodrang, the Palace of Great Happiness. The name is apt for the setting, but the building is also a fortress in earnest: a Tibetan army was defeated here in 1639, and arms captured in that campaign are still preserved within the walls.

A dzong combines functions that other countries separate. Half of the building housed monks, temples and the monastic body; the other half housed the district administration and the officials who collected taxes, settled disputes and raised troops. Tradition holds that the builder, Zowe Palep, worked without drawn plans, from a vision of Guru Rinpoche’s celestial palace revealed to him in a dream. What resulted became the model for dzong architecture across the country: tapering whitewashed walls, a broad band of dark red beneath the eaves, rows of carved and painted timber windows, and tiered roofs of gilded copper.

Three courtyards instead of two

Most dzongs are divided into two courtyards, one administrative and one monastic, separated by the central tower. Punakha has three. The dzong runs about 180 metres along the spit and some 72 metres across it, and walking its length means passing through a sequence of spaces that grow steadily more sacred.

The first, northern courtyard is administrative and holds a large white chorten and a bodhi tree. The second is dominated by the utse, the six-storey central tower, and surrounded by monks’ quarters. The southernmost courtyard contains the main assembly hall, where the monastic body gathers, and the temples that hold the dzong’s most important relics, including the remains of the Zhabdrung himself, who died here, and of the fifteenth-century treasure-revealer Pema Lingpa. The chamber holding the Zhabdrung’s sealed casket, the Machey Lhakhang, may be entered only by the King, the Je Khenpo (Bhutan’s chief abbot) and its two guardian lamas.

Can you go inside Punakha Dzong?

Yes: visitors can walk through the courtyards and, with a guide, enter the main assembly hall, but several shrines and the monks’ quarters are closed. The assembly hall is the high point, with gilded statues of the Buddha, Guru Rinpoche and the Zhabdrung, and wall paintings that tell the life of the Buddha in continuous panels. Photography is not permitted inside the temples, and access can be restricted at short notice for ceremonies, so the precise route on the day is decided by your Bhutanese guide. Entry is reached by crossing the cantilever bridge and climbing a steep wooden staircase at the gate; beyond it, the courtyards are level flagstone.

Punakha and Bhutan’s former capital

For more than three centuries after the Zhabdrung, the government of Bhutan moved with the seasons: summer in Thimphu, winter in Punakha. The pattern survives in the monastic calendar, since the Je Khenpo and the central monastic body still spend the winter months here and return to Thimphu in spring. Punakha remained the capital until 1955, when the court settled permanently in Thimphu.

The dzong’s greatest moments belong to the twentieth century. In December 1907 an assembly of lamas, officials and leading families gathered at Punakha to enthrone Ugyen Wangchuck as the first hereditary King of Bhutan, ending decades of civil conflict between regional governors. Three years later, the Treaty of Punakha was signed here, under which Britain undertook not to interfere in Bhutan’s internal affairs in return for guiding its foreign relations. It is one of the reasons Bhutan, unlike its neighbour Sikkim, kept its independence, a contrast our history of the Kingdom of Sikkim explores from the other side of the border. More recently, in 2011, the dzong hosted the wedding of the present King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

The building has also had to survive its setting. Fires, most often from butter lamps, damaged it repeatedly between 1780 and 1986; an earthquake struck in 1897; and in 1994 a glacial lake burst far upstream and sent a flood down the Pho Chhu that damaged the dzong and claimed lives in the valley. Much of what visitors see today reflects careful restoration by Bhutanese craftsmen working in the traditional manner, completed in the early 2000s, which is part of what makes it feel so alive rather than preserved.

When is the best time to see Punakha Dzong?

Spring is the most photogenic season, because the jacaranda trees planted along the walls usually flower in April and early May, framing the white dzong in lilac. Late autumn has the clearest mountain air and the most settled weather, and the valley’s rice has typically been harvested, leaving golden stubble on the terraces. Odyssey’s departures fall in both windows, in April and November. Punakha’s own festivals, the Drubchen and Tshechu, fall in late winter on the Bhutanese lunar calendar, outside the tour dates; our guide to the festivals of Bhutan explains how the calendar works.

Beyond the dzong: the Punakha Valley and Chimi Lhakhang

Punakha Dzong is the reason most people come to the valley, but the valley itself is worth an unhurried afternoon. Its low altitude and river water make it one of Bhutan’s main rice-growing districts, and the red rice served at almost every Bhutanese meal is largely grown on terraces like these, as our article on Bhutanese food and the culture of the table describes.

Across the terraced fields of Sopsokha village stands Chimi Lhakhang, a small temple on a low rise. It is associated with Drukpa Kunley, the fifteenth-century teacher remembered as the Divine Madman, whose outrageous behaviour and bawdy verse were intended to shock people out of complacent piety. The temple, built in 1499 by his cousin on a site he had blessed, is known as the Temple of Fertility, and couples from across Bhutan still come to receive a blessing there. The village houses on the way are painted with symbols that surprise most visitors; your guide will explain them, and they are best taken in the spirit in which they are offered.

How far is the walk to Chimi Lhakhang?

It takes about an hour, on a footpath across the terraced fields, and it is optional. The path is mostly gentle, with a short climb at the end up to the temple on its rise, but it is unpaved and can be uneven or muddy after rain, so walking shoes with good grip are worth packing. Because it is optional, anyone who would rather rest can skip it without missing the dzong, which is a separate part of the day.

What should you wear to visit Punakha Dzong?

Long sleeves and long trousers or a skirt covering the knees, with shoulders covered and hats removed inside. Dzongs are active religious and government buildings, and Bhutanese visitors wear formal national dress with a ceremonial scarf; visitors are not expected to match that, but a collared shirt or modest top is appreciated. Walk clockwise around chortens and shrines, keep voices low in the assembly hall, and do not point your feet toward altars if you sit. The monks here are at work and at home, and the kindest thing a visitor can do is let the building carry on with its day.

This is also the useful thing to know about the dzong’s place among Bhutan’s religious buildings more broadly. Where our guide to Bhutanese temples surveys the country’s shrines, Punakha shows what happens when a temple, a fortress and a government office share one set of walls, and why the Bhutanese regard dzongs as the institutions that made the country.

From Punakha to Paro

The group spends the night in the valley, and the next morning offers one more view of it: an early hike of about an hour up to Khamsum Yulley Namgyal Chorten, a hilltop temple dedicated to the fifth King, with the rivers and terraces laid out below. After a riverside picnic, the road leads west for about four hours to Paro, where the Rinpung Dzong, a sister fortress built by the same Zhabdrung, completes the picture; our guide to Paro Rinpung Dzong and its art takes up the story there.

Seen in sequence, Punakha is the point where the journey through the Eastern Himalaya turns from landscape to institution: the colonial hill station of Darjeeling and the lost kingdom of Sikkim lie behind, and ahead lies a country that governed itself from buildings like this one. For how the whole route fits together, from Darjeeling’s tea gardens to the climb to Tiger’s Nest, see our Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan itinerary, or explore the Tour of Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Bhutan, which travels it in a small group of 6 to 14 with a Program Leader and local guides throughout. For a longer stay inside the kingdom, the 17-day Bhutan Small Group Cultural Tour spends two days in Punakha before continuing east to Trongsa and Bumthang.