Milarepa Lhakhang
Milarepa Lhakhang — also called Sangye Migyur Ling — is a nine-storey tower standing about 16 kilometres up the Thimphu highway from Phuentsholing, at a place sources call Ramitey or Rigzin Ling. It is not in the town: you pass it on the drive north.
Thirty to forty-five minutes on the ground, and about forty minutes’ driving each way from the border.
What is it a replica of?
The tower Milarepa built, and pulled down, and built again.
Marpa the Translator set his student Jetsun Milarepa to build a nine-storey tower for his son at Lhodrak in southern Tibet, then ordered it dismantled — over and over — as the labour that would work off the black magic Milarepa had used to kill his mother’s enemies. The sekhar gutok, the nine-storey house, is a story every Kagyu lineage tells, and this building is a copy of it.
Nine is the point. From outside it reads as ten storeys, and it is often described that way; the count that matters is the one in the story.
Who is behind it?
Lama Kelzang, a Bhutanese Karma Kagyu master. The project was started by three monks from eastern Bhutan — two brothers and a cousin — who trained at a Kagyu monastery in Hong Kong, and ground was broken in 2011 on a 12-acre site.
Replicas of Milarepa’s tower already stood elsewhere before this one: Lama Kelzang visited one in Qinghai in 2007, and this project followed. It is the copy, not the original — a point worth making because it is frequently stated the other way round, including on the older version of this page.
Can you go in?
We don’t publish an answer. Nothing available says whether visitors go inside or climb the tower, and the three accounts that exist give two different years for the building itself — the earlier one only as a forecast.
Ask us before you count on it — we would rather check than guess about a nine-storey climb.
We also don’t give a map pin or an altitude for it, because no map database we can reach has one. Your driver knows where it is; the internet does not.
See things to do in Chhukha for the rest of the district.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Milarepa Lhakhang?
About 16 km up the Thimphu highway from Phuentsholing, at a place sources name as Ramitey or Rigzin Ling, short of Sorchen. It is not in the town — you pass it on the drive north rather than walking to it, so it belongs to your first morning out of Phuentsholing rather than to an afternoon in it.
How many storeys does the tower have?
Nine. That is the number that matters: Milarepa's original tower at Lhodrak was a nine-storey building, so a replica of it is a nine-storey building. One account notes that it appears ten-storeyed from outside, which is a remark about how it looks rather than a count of floors.
When was it built?
Ground was broken in 2011 on a 12-acre site. We don't publish a completion date — three accounts circulate and they give two different years, the earlier of them only as a forecast made in 2014 — and nothing published says whether visitors go inside or up. Ask us before counting on it.
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