Khoma Weaving Center

Khoma is a village 11.5 km east of Lhuentse town where the finest textile in Bhutan is made: kishuthara, patterned silk woven on backstrap looms. An hour to an hour and a half; most people who come this far stay the night. Entry is included in your tour.

What makes Khoma different from a weaving demonstration

It is the village’s income, not a show.

Almost 80% of household spending in Khoma gewog is met by selling kishuthara, and all five of its chiwogs weave. The weaving day runs from about six in the morning until seven at night. When you walk in you are walking through several hundred people’s livelihood — which is why the etiquette below matters more here than at a monument.

The looms are in the houses and in the yards. After the harvest is when the village is at its fullest: rows of women sitting upright at backstrap looms under bamboo canopies in the cut fields, the youngest of them eight or nine years old, learning beside their mothers on cotton before they are trusted with silk.

What is kishuthara?

Silk, patterned so densely that the ground almost disappears — and the most demanding thing woven in Bhutan.

The silk is boiled in a citric mixture to hold its colour, sun-dried, spun into one continuous yarn, stretched between two stands and laid out vertically on the loom before a single pattern thread is placed. There are three types: ngagsham on a black ground, oshom on blue, and white kishuthara. Every weaver in Bhutan is a woman, and each kishuthara carries its weaver’s signature — the patterns grow denser and more intricate as the occasion the kira is meant for grows in importance.

A fine piece takes six months to a year. Our guide to weaving in Bhutan has the rest of the technique.

What does one cost?

Bhutanese reporting gives a wide range, and it is honest to give it as a range:

• Nu 30,000 to over Nu 100,000 for a silk kishuthara, by material, pattern density and length — The Bhutanese, 2019.
• Up to Nu 240,000 for a piece of the greatest complexity — BBS, 2023.

Prices move, and pieces have sat in the village unsold for as long as two years for want of anywhere to sell them, which is the whole reason a showroom was funded. Ask us what the village is asking before you travel, and buy from the weaver rather than from a shop in Thimphu if you want the money to land here.

Is there a weaving centre to visit?

Carefully answered: the weaving is the attraction, and it does not depend on a building.

In April 2023 the Khoma Gewog Administration and the Department of Tourism announced a Nu 3 million showroom and weaving hall for around 25 weavers, with construction to start that July. “Many tourists visit us daily to witness the weaving culture of Khoma,” a gewog official said at the time. We have found no announcement that it opened — so rather than tell you a centre is there, we will tell you what is standing when you book.

Either way you will be shown looms, and either way you can buy.

How to behave in Khoma

Ask before you photograph — every time, and each weaver. These are private houses and working women, not a gallery. Most will say yes; the asking is the point.

The road in is rough; the village itself is level once you are in it. It sits at about 1,350 m and there is no season that closes it.

If you have seen the National Textile Museum in Thimphu, this is the other half of that visit: the masterpieces there, the hands here.

See things to do in Lhuentse for the rest of the district.