Ap Chundu Soka

Ap Chundu Soka is the annual offering to Ap Chundu, the guardian deity of Haa, and the holiest day in the Haap calendar. It starts before dawn at Lhakhang Karpo, where the deity’s shrine is, and moves up the valley in a chipdrel procession — six stops, including the historic Haa Dzong — to Jangkhakha in upper Haa, where the day ends.

The national heritage inventory records it as Chundu Soelchod, or Soelkha; the dzongkhag calls it Ap Chundu’s Lhapsoel. All the same day.

When it is — and why we won’t print one date

Three sources, three answers. The dzongkhag administration says it is held annually on 1 November. The national intangible cultural heritage inventory puts it in the ninth month of the Bhutanese calendar, toward the end of the year. A Haap account of the related Bho-Yak, Ap Chundu’s birthday, gives the 7th day of the ninth month. And it is not on the Department of Tourism’s festival schedule at all, because it is a village rite rather than a tshechu.

A fixed civil date and a lunar rule cannot both be the rule. The sources agree on the season and disagree on everything else — which makes this exactly the sort of date worth flying for and exactly the sort we will not let you book against.

Late autumn, and ask us for your year.

Who Ap Chundu is — three stories, all of them told

You will hear different origins depending on who is telling it, and they are layers rather than contradictions.

The oldest layer: before the eighth century, Haa was held by Ap Chundu and other local deities, and it did not go well for the people who lived here. Guru Rinpoche arrived, performed the Avalokiteśvara rite, and every one of them fell unconscious. Ap Chundu woke as a turquoise-coloured boy prostrating before the Guru — and became the valley’s protector and a defender of the doctrine.

The middle layer, and the one our site has always told: he was banished to Haa by the Zhabdrung after an altercation with Ap Gyenyen, Thimphu’s protector, and then fell out with Jichu Drakye of Paro, who took Haa’s water. Hence, in the local telling, no rice in Haa — in a valley whose name is read as a hidden rice valley. (The geography agrees about the upper valley at 2,700 m. It disagrees about the district’s subtropical southern reaches, where rice does grow.)

The most recent layer, and the reason for the offering itself: the heritage inventory traces the festival to the Zhabdrung’s conflict with the Tsang Desi of Tibet, when Ap Chundu fought for the Haaps — raising fire and noise at Jangkhakha until the Tibetan attackers fell into the river below. The offering is the thanks.

He is held to be a manifestation of Chana Dorji, Vajrapani, the Buddha of power — one of the three Meri Puensum peaks standing over the valley. The deity and the skyline are the same thing.

The day

It begins in the dark at the white temple, with the monk body’s recitation. Then the deity is carried out in the chipdrel — the ceremonial escort, with drums, bells and song — and the procession works north up the valley, halting at six sites including the historic dzong, and ends at Jangkhakha, Ap Chundu’s own ground, in upper Haa. It is said to be the longest chipdrel in the country.

The dancing at Jangkhakha is done by men known as pazerpa, or pazaap, in their own dress, with their own songs — zhey — and their own steps. This is not the masked religious dance you see at a tshechu. It is older and more local, and it is one of the places where Bhutan’s pre-Buddhist religion is still doing visible work.

The yak

Until 2013, a yak was slaughtered and offered.

That year the dzongkhag, the gewog and the family who had carried out the rite for generations sat down together — and, because you do not simply stop making an offering a deity has had for centuries, put the question to Ap Chundu by dice. The astrologer read the answer as assent, and the killing stopped.

Meat is still bought and served to the gathering. What ended was the animal dying in front of the people who would eat it — something many Haaps had already stopped doing, bringing their own lunch boxes rather than eat what had been alive minutes earlier.

It is a small, dated, specific thing, and it is the most interesting thing on this page: a living tradition changing its mind in public, with the deity consulted first.

Can you be there?

Ask us, well before you book. This is a community rite on the holiest day of the Haap year, performed by particular men of particular villages, and nothing published tells us whether outsiders attend, watch from a distance, or stay away. We would rather find out for your dates than promise you something here.

If you photograph anything, ask first. Nobody is performing.

The rest of Ap Chundu’s valley

Chhundu Lhakhang, eleven kilometres north of Haa, is one of several shrines to him — the blue-faced deity and his red-faced cousin Jowya either side of the altar. His main shrine is inside Lhakhang Karpo, where the day starts. And in April 2026 his life was staged publicly for the first time, as a thirty-minute drama at the Haa Spring Festival.

See things to do in Haa for how the district fits together.