Perched atop a promontory with sweeping views of Thimphu Valley is Changangkha Lhakhang, a neighborhood temple that has served locals daily since its construction some 800 years ago. Ringing the outside of its whitewashed fortress walls are metal prayer wheels with black and gold script, waiting to be spun day or night. Inside, butter lamp offerings flicker ceaselessly in the courtyard. Two giant prayer wheels hold space at the entrance to the inner sanctum — where no shoes or picture taking are permitted.

All day long until it closes at 5, parents approach the inner sanctum to ask the protector deity to bless their children, or to request auspicious names for their newborns from the four resident monks. Ngultrum and sacks of snacks, biscuits, incense, and whiskey are offered in exchange. 

On entering, everyone bows to the portrait of the king. Then they turn around to bow three times before the centerpiece of the sanctum, a mesmerizing outsized statue of the thousand-armed deity of ultimate compassion, Chenrezi (Avalokiteshvara), whose mantra is the renowned “Om mani padme hung.” Lama Phajo Drukgom Shigpo, the Tibetan immigrant who chose the site and built the temple, was an emanation of Chenrezi. Visitors in a quiet state may be able to feel the vibe of compassion that permeates the place. Winds blowing up from the valley below tauten prayer flags to send these blessings onwards. 

Not long ago, the government-owned utility, Bhutan Power Corporation, lit the temple from below with white lights that make the upper walls of wood appear burnt orange. Window recesses are lit in artery red. The gold roof with its fierce protector dragons caps the scene. Now, at night, Changangkha is a beacon that can be made out from a long ways away.

Thimphu

Changangkha Lhakhang

After the monsoon rains, the terraced fields around Chimi Lhakhang turn a vivid shade of green as rice grows and ripens in the warmth of the Punakha Valley. A short walk through the fields takes visitors from the roadside at Sopsokha through two tiny villages and up the stony path to Chimi Lhakhang, which stands beside an ancient banyan tree on a hilltop overlooking the valley. 

Built in 1499, Chimi Lhakhang is dedicated to the "Divine Madman," Drukpa Kunley, a sage revered in Bhutan for his unorthodox teachings and his use of a "flaming thunderbolt" to fight evil. 

While Chimi Lhakhang marks the spot where Drukpa Kunley defeated and buried a much-feared demoness, today the hilltop lhakhang is visited by expectant mothers and families with newborns to pray for their children's health. A blessing from the lhakhang's wooden phallus is also believed to help childless couples conceive; the number of Bhutanese children named Chimi may be testament to this method's success rate!

Punakha

Chimi Lhakhang

One of Thimphu’s most sacred and commonly visited place is Dechenphu Lhakhang.   

Fondly referred to by locals as “The House of Final Decisions”, this quiet hillside monastery welcomes hundreds of prayers, permission and refuge seekers, promise makers and repenters that pass through its highly decorated alter every day.

The narrow road winding through a beautiful blue pine forest sheds the first realization of this blessed location. The monastery’s ancient architecture is well maintained and is surrounded by a beautiful nature park. One has to walk up a stone path to 8725 feet in order to reach the tall towering red Goenkhang. From here, the monastery stands majestically at the base of a mountain like a recently completed painting.

Dechenphu Lhakhang is the residing place of the valley’s guardian deity, Gyenyen Jagpa Milen, who is believed to have dissolved or disappeared into a rock just outside the lhakhang. It is believed that Ap Gyenyen holds a special spiritual authority on the souls of Thimphupas who believes every single request by prayer is taken into his consideration. 

The lhakhang is most popular on auspicious days.  The annual Dechenphu Tsechu is also held at the same place and is one of the valley’s most important annual events.

Situated 30 minutes drive away from Thimphu, tourists are barred from entrance to the main shrine, but they can convey their wishes through their respective guides.

Kawang

Dechenphu Lhakhang

The Druk Wangyal Lhakhang, a temple in Dochula, offers an interesting example of traditional Buddhist culture meeting the 21st century. 

The Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck completed construction of this temple in 2008, in commemoration of Bhutanese casualities in the 2003 conflict with Assamese militants.

Upon entering the main building, which is perched above the Dochula district, one notices the beautifully modern wall murals. Unlike nearly any others in Bhutan, these depict Bhutan in modernity with images such as a Druk Air plane, the royal family, a monk with a laptop, and the 4th King of Bhutan leading the army against the Assamese militants.  

Every year, on December 13th, the Druk Wangyal Festival respectfully commemorates that battle. The festival fuses old traditions and modern costume design, with storytelling dances.

Dochula

Druk Wangyal Lhakhang

In the atmospheric darkness of Jampa Lhakhang's inner kora, the golden outlines of a thousand finely painted Buddhas glimmer in the light of yak butter lamps. The kora's wooden floorboards have been worn smooth by generations of devotees treading their way around the lhakhang's ancient heart. Inside the central chapel, Jampa, the gentle-faced future Buddha, sits flanked by eight bodhisattvas, his feet resting upon an elephant as dragons swirl about him. This single thick-walled room - filled with a wealth of gorgeous statuary, its door bound with divinely forged chainmail - is the oldest part of the oldest lhakhang in Bhutan.

From the gently creaking prayer wheels outside, through peaceful courtyards filled with cooing pigeons to the candlelit statues of the central chapel, an air of calm and antiquity pervades Jampa Lhakhang. The temple is believed to be one of 108 built on a single day by the seventh-century Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo, to pin down a demoness who was obstructing the spread of Buddhism in Tibet. 

While crowds flock to here for the annual Jampa Lhakhang Drup festival, visit at any other time of year and you will discover the low-lying complex manned by a handful of monks and a group of elderly devotees who keep Jampa's huge prayer wheels in constant motion.

Bumthang

Jambay Lhakhang

With its golden umbrella-shaped peak gleaming against a backdrop of brown hills, Jangtsa Dumtseg Lhakhang is one of the region's most unusual lhakhangs. Built in the fifteenth-century by the Iron Bridge Lama, Thangtong Gyalpo, the lhakhang is built in the shape of a Tibetan-style chorten against a hill overlooking the confluence of the Paro Chhu and Do Chhu, over a bridge from Paro itself.

Thangtong Gyalpo is believed to have built the lhakhang in this shape to better pin down either a troublesome demoness or a powerful naga spirit - sources are divided as to which it was. More certain however, is this small lhakhang's importance as a repository of iconography from the Drukpa Kagyu school, with peaceful and wrathful deities dancing on the walls of all three floors, which themselves represent heaven, earth and hell.

Paro

Jangtsa Dumtseg Lhakhang

Approaching Karpo Lhakhang, whose name means “White Temple” in Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, a large and ornate gate greets visitors immediately. 

Looking straight ahead, the rectangular, heavyset temple appears with red and white colors and a golden crownlike projection on top. Roughly 60 monks and teachers currently live here, and two new temples are under construction on either side of the main one. 

Inside the building, an elaborate and vividly colored display of deities, human masters and holy teachers explodes from the walls. Daily, monks perform ceremonies complete with baritone chanting and haunting musical instruments.  

A great Tibetan ruler and lama, or Buddhist teacher, named Songtsan Gampo supposedly started construction of the temple in the 7th century. According to local legend, two birds, one black and one white, emanated from his consciousness and flew from Tibet to this location. The white bird landed on the site of Karpo Lhakhang, hence “white temple.” Locals built Nagpo Lhakhang, the “black temple,” where the black bird landed.

Residents of the monastery believe that local deity Ap Chungdu gives them protection from sickness and ill fortune. Businessmen of the area even come to make wishes for success in commerce. 

Visitors from foreign lands will delight in the natural beauty and powerful sense of calm radiating from Karpo Lhakhang. 

Dumchoe

Karpo Lhakhang

Just to the south of low-lying Tamshing Lhakhang, newly rebuilt Kenchosum Lhakhang stands tall upon the ashes of its predecessors. Built by the Tibetan King, Tsirong Detsen, in the early ninth century on the instruction of Guru Rinpoche (who is believed to have designed and consecrated it), the monastery slowly amassed a wealth of art and statuary through the centuries. Much of this heritage was destroyed in a single night in 2010, when a butter lamp set fire to the historic building.

Kenchosum Lhakhang has since been reconstructed and was reconsecrated in 2014, although some restoration work is ongoing. The complex centers on a grand new prayer hall that contains a priceless statue and a handful of relics that were pulled from the wreckage of the fire.

The lhakhang houses several sacred statues including the three statues of Due Sum Sangay (The Past, Present and the Future Buddhas). It is renowned for its ancient relics; one of which is the eighth century broken bronze bell that is believed to have been offered as a gift to Guru Rinpoche by a mermaid. Legend has it that when the bell is rung, the sound can be heard as far as Lhasa in Tibet.


Chhoekhor

Kenchosum Lhakhang

Located opposite Tabiting and situated on the east side of Phobjikha, the spectacular Khewang Lhakhang sits like an intricately carved decoration piece in the middle of the dreamlike glacial valley of Phobjikha, the winter roost for the endangered Black Necked Cranes. The location of this 15th Century Lhakhang is believed to be prophesized by the renowned Divine Madman, Drukpa Kuenlay, when he visited the valley.

It was built by Trulku Penjor Gyeltshen, an incarnation of the great Tibetan master Kuenkhen Longchen Rabjampa. He hired sculptors and laborers from Tibet, hence the Tibetan characteristics one can see in the temple design. The temple was built to control famine and diseases, to ward off ill wishes and to liberate the spirits of people who have sinned. 

The Temple features three two-storied statues of the past, present and future Buddhas (dusum sangay). A tsechu (religious festival) is held on the third day of the ninth month every year where the sacred dances are performed by local lay practitioners. This celebration symbolizes an ancient victory over local demons. 

The single big room in this west facing temple houses ancient statues that are placed on the altar surrounded by beautifully intricate wall paintings. In the center facing the entrance is a large statue of Maitreya Buddha, crude looking and as old as the temple itself. The statue is said to have been sculpted in a hurry by a short lived Tibetan sculptor which explains its poor aesthetics.

Phobjikha

Khewang Lhakhang

Located centrally in the town of Khuruthang, this temple sees spiritually-inclined locals circumambulating its perimeter throughout the day. 

The Royal Grandmother built Khuruthang Temple in 2005, after Punakha town was relocated. The town moved here in 1999 from its original location next to the Punakha Dzong.

Khuruthang Lhakhang

It also remains one of the country's most important religious sites - thanks to its intimate connection with the revered tantric saint, Guru Rinpoche. 

Flights of white-washed stone steps deliver visitors, breathless, to Kurjey's most important chapels and to views that run the length of the Chokhor Valley. The oldest chapel, the Guru Lhakhang, contains a shallow meditation cave once used by Guru Rinpoche. Here, he left an imprint of his body that gives the lhakhang its name - kur, meaning "body," and jey, "print." The cave is flanked by statues of Guru Rinpoche holding brass-bound kapala - ritual bowls made of human skulls - and surrounded by rank upon rank of miniature brass statues. The venerable cypress tree that looms over the Guru Lhakhang is said to have sprouted from the sage's staff, planted there to seal a bargain struck between the Guru and a local deity, thus marking the deity's eighth-century conversion to Buddhism.

The story of Guru Rinpoche's spiritual work in Bumthang is retold each summer in Kurjey's annual tsechu, which draws crowds from Bumthang and beyond.

Kurjey Lhakhang

Legend tells that beneath the dramatic landscape of the Tibetan Plateau there lies the body of a demoness. When it was divined that she was preventing the spread of Buddhism, the great seventh-century Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo pinned her in place with 108 magically constructed temples -- allowing Buddhism to flourish above her restrained body. One of Bhutan's two ancient demoness-pinning temples, Paro's Kyichu Lhakhang is believed to hold the demoness's left foot in place.

With its tiered roof and luminous white walls, the lhakhang's age is not immediately apparent. It is only inside the monastery's ancient heart, the Jowo Lhakhang, that the sanctuary's long history is palpable. Golden murals shine faintly from smoke-darkened walls, and the floor has been polished smooth by the feet of countless faithful practitioners. The holiest part of the chapel surrounds the revered seventh-century statue of Jowo Sakyamuni, visible through a gilded door. The neighboring Guru Lhakhang was built in 1968 under the sponsorship of the Third King's wife, Ashi Kesang Wangchuck, and holds an impressive statue of Guru Rinpoche surrounded by elegantly restrained paintings of Buddhist saints and fearsome dharmapalas.

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