Tharpaling Monastery

Tharpaling — “place of liberation” — sits at around 3,600 metres above the Chumey valley, west of Jakar. Longchen Rabjam, the great Dzogchen master, made it his seat in the 14th century, and it has been a meditation place ever since. Allow two and a half to three hours, most of it driving. Entry is included in your tour.

Getting there is most of the visit

Tharpaling is in Chumey, not Tang. That matters, because it is the single most common error about this monastery — including on this page until recently. A feeder road climbs from Gyetsa village in the Chumey valley, west of Jakar on the Trongsa side, and takes you up to around 3,600 m.

The road is rough and it is frequently cut during the monsoon. That is the useful fact about visiting Tharpaling and it decides the season: March to June and October to December, and ask us in the wet months.

We do not publish a drive time from Jakar. Every published figure we could find disagrees with the next — half an hour, an hour, two hours — and none is official. Your guide will tell you what it takes on the day, which is better than us guessing on a page.

At 3,600 m the air is noticeably thinner than in Jakar, a thousand metres below. Take the steps slowly and bring a layer more than you think you need.

What is up there

A monastery on an open hillside with a very long view, and a working retreat community. This is a place people come to sit still for years at a time, and it feels like it.

Longchen Rabjam (1308–1364) — Longchenpa, or Kunkhyen Longchen Rabjam as he is known in Bhutan — was one of the most important figures in the Nyingma school and the great systematiser of Dzogchen teaching. He spent years in Bhutan and Tharpaling was his seat. It has been a meditation retreat for major teachers ever since, among them Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche in the last century.

The site is believed to have been founded before him by Lorepa, a Drukpa Kagyu master from Tibet, and to have become a Nyingma institution under Longchenpa. Accounts differ on the century of that first foundation, so we will say only that it predates him.

The Tharpaling Thongdrol is unfurled here in late winter — 3 March 2026 and 20 February 2027, lunar dates that move. A giant appliqué thongdrol at 3,600 m in February is not a normal festival experience; ask us if it interests you. The dates are in the Bhutan festival calendar.

How it fits your day

Tharpaling is a Chumey valley stop, which means it belongs either to your arrival from Trongsa or to a dedicated half-day out of Jakar. The obvious pairing is Nimalung Dratshang, also in Chumey.

Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off inside, no photographs in the temple. See things to do in Bumthang for how a Chumey day compares with the Choekor and Tang ones.