Chhundu Lhakhang

Chhundu Lhakhang is a recently rebuilt village temple eleven kilometres north of Haa, one of several shrines to Ap Chundu, the valley’s guardian deity. Inside, the blue-faced Ap Chhundu and his red-faced cousin Jowya stand either side of the main altar. Thirty to forty-five minutes; entry is included in your tour.

Why you stop here

Not for the architecture. This is a small temple, much of it new, on the road up the valley — and it exists on your itinerary because of who is inside it.

Ap Chundu is the birth deity of everyone born in Haa, and he is held to be a manifestation of Chana Dorji, Vajrapani, the Buddha of power — one of the three Meri Puensum peaks over the valley. The valley’s god and the valley’s skyline are the same thing.

The fight, and the water

The story is the reason this page exists, and Haaps tell it about themselves.

Ap Chundu was banished to Haa by the Zhabdrung after an altercation with Ap Gyenyen, the protector of Thimphu. Then he fell out with Jichu Drakye, Paro’s guardian — and lost that one too, and Paro took Haa’s water. Which, in the local telling, is why no rice is grown in Haa, in a valley whose name is read as a hidden rice valley.

One qualifier, because it is easily checked: that explains the upper valley, where you are standing, at around 2,700 m and too high and dry for paddy. Haa district also runs south into subtropical country, and rice does grow in its lower reaches. The legend is about the part of Haa people see.

The offering

Haaps still make their annual offering to Ap Chundu, at the Ap Chundu Soka — a day that starts before dawn at Lhakhang Karpo and works six stops up the valley to the deity’s own ground. It keeps a thread of Haa’s pre-Buddhist religion visibly alive.

A yak was slaughtered and offered every year until 2013, when the practice was stopped — after the deity’s permission was sought by dice and read as given. That page has the whole story.

Visiting

Road access, then steps into the temple. Shoulders and knees covered, long sleeves, shoes off before you enter; photograph the outside, not the inside.

Nobody publishes opening hours for a village lhakhang, and whether the caretaker is about is not something we can promise. Ask us, and we will check before you drive north.

See things to do in Haa for how this fits with the rest of the valley — and if you only have one Ap Chundu stop in you, make it his main shrine inside the white temple.