Tamshing Monastery

Tamshing — properly Tamzhing Lhundrup Choling — was built by Pema Lingpa in 1501, across the river from Kurjey. It is the most important Nyingma monastery in Bhutan, the seat of Pema Lingpa’s speech incarnation, and the home of a 25 kg iron chain-mail coat he is said to have forged himself. Allow 30–45 minutes; entry is included in your tour.

The chain mail

This is what people remember about Tamshing, and it is not a display case.

A heavy iron coat of chain mail, weighing about twenty-five kilograms, is kept at the monastery and attributed to Pema Lingpa’s own hand — he was a working blacksmith as well as a terton, which is a combination Bhutan takes entirely for granted. Pilgrims lift it onto their shoulders and carry it three times round the temple. Completing the three circuits is held to clear a lifetime’s accumulated sins.

Twenty-five kilograms is a real weight, the ground outside is uneven, and it is not obvious that a visitor is welcome to try. Ask your guide first. Nobody publishes an answer to that question and it plausibly depends on who is at the monastery that day.

What else is here

The wall paintings. They are coeval with the building — early 1500s — which makes them among the oldest surviving paintings in the country, and they include a portrait of Pema Lingpa. The murals flank both sides of the entrance.

The building around them is old and worn, and it has never been comprehensively restored. That is exactly why the paintings are still five hundred years old rather than a modern repainting of a five-hundred-year-old design. It is worth going in with that in mind, because a first glance says “shabby” and a second says “original”.

Pema Lingpa died here in 1521 and his remains were placed in a stupa at the monastery. Tamshing is the seat of Sungtrul Rinpoche, his speech incarnation — the eleventh, born in 1967 — and one of the three lines of incarnation that carry his lineage.

The monastery supports more than ninety-five monks and receives no government support.

When to go, and how it fits your day

Year-round. It sits across the Chamkhar Chhu from Kurjey, so it is the third stop of the Choekor valley morning: Jampey, Kurjey, Tamshing. See things to do in Bumthang for how the rest of the district fits round that.

September or October brings Tamshing Phala Chhoepa — 21–23 September 2026 and 10–12 October 2027, lunar dates that move. It is one of the festivals on our Bumthang festivals tour, and we have written about the blessings given at it.

Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off inside, and no photographs in the temple.

A little history

Pema Lingpa (1450–1521) is the figure Bumthang is built around. Born in the Tang valley, he made his name at Mebartsho by surfacing from a river pool with a butter lamp still burning, and he spent the rest of his life revealing the hidden treasures Guru Rinpoche is said to have left for him — an inventory of a hundred and eight, of which he found about half.

He built Tamshing in 1501 and died here twenty years later. It is submitted for UNESCO World Heritage inscription — put forward in March 2012 and on the tentative list since, along with the rest of Bhutan’s candidates. Nothing in Bhutan is fully inscribed yet.