Pema Choeling Nunnery

Pema Choeling is a shedra — a monastic college — for nuns, in the Tang valley on the road to Ogyen Choling. It was founded in 2001 and it houses about a hundred nuns on a nine-year course in Buddhist philosophy. Allow 30–45 minutes. Ask us before you plan a visit — this is a working residential college, not a monument.

Why it exists

Pema Lingpa is said to have prophesied, in the 15th century, that a great centre of learning for women would one day stand in the middle of the sacred Tang valley.

Five hundred years later the ninth Gangtey Tulku, who holds Pema Lingpa’s lineage, founded one — here, in 2001. The first nuns lived in huts. It is now a nine-year programme in Buddhist philosophy in the Nyingma Peling tradition, taught alongside ordinary school subjects, and it is described as the first Buddhist college in Bhutan to produce women with masters degrees in Buddhist philosophy.

Roughly a hundred nuns study here, from about twelve years old to seventy. In a country where the monastic institutions have been overwhelmingly male for a thousand years, that is the whole story of the place, and it is a much better reason to stop than the scenery.

Before you go

Ask us. No source publishes term dates, opening times, or whether visitors are welcome — and a hundred women and girls live here. “You can visit” is a claim about somebody else’s home and study, and it is not ours to make from a desk.

Your guide checks whether the shedra is in session and whether a visit suits. That is the difference between being welcomed and being an intrusion, and it is exactly what happens at Sangchen Choekor in Paro for the same reasons.

If you do visit: shoulders and knees covered, and ask before photographing anyone.

How it fits your day

It sits on the Tang valley road, between Ta Rimochen and Ogyen Choling at the head of the valley, so it costs half an hour of a day that is already going past the door. The Tang day starts at Mebartsho, about thirty minutes out of Chamkhar.

See things to do in Bumthang for how the Tang valley compares with Choekor, Chumey and Ura.

Not to be confused with Pema Tekchok Choling, a different nunnery founded in 2000 a few kilometres down the same valley, which looks after Mebartsho. The names are nearly identical and even published accounts mix them up.