Kyichu Lhakhang

Kyichu Lhakhang is one of the two oldest temples in Bhutan, ten minutes north-west of Paro town. Tradition has it built in the 7th century to pin down the left foot of a demoness. Two temples share one small walled courtyard. Allow 30–45 minutes. The entry fee is Nu 500, and it is included in your tour.

What you’re looking at

Two buildings, one courtyard, thirteen centuries apart.

The older one is the Jowo Lhakhang. Inside is the Jowo Jampa, an image of the Buddha attributed to Songtsen Gampo’s own 7th-century foundation — the same lineage of statue as the famous Jowo of the Jokhang in Lhasa, which is where the name comes from. The floorboards in front of it are worn into hollows by prostrations. That is the detail people remember: not the age as a number, but the wood.

Beside it stands the Guru Lhakhang, built in the twentieth century by Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck — queen of the Third King, and today the Royal Grandmother — and consecrated by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great teachers of the last century. A chorten holding his ashes stands beside the Guru Rinpoche statue.

And in the courtyard between them, two orange trees, which are said to fruit all year round.

The demoness, and why this temple is here at all

Songtsen Gampo, the 7th-century Tibetan emperor, is said to have built 108 temples across Tibet and the Himalaya on a single day, each pinning down part of a vast demoness lying across the landscape and obstructing the spread of Buddhism.

Kyichu holds down her left foot. Jampey Lhakhang in Bumthang is another of the 108 — the other contender for the oldest temple in Bhutan and, by the same tradition, built on the same day. That is why we say “one of the two oldest” and not “the oldest”, whatever the signage anywhere in Bhutan tells you.

Two more, if you follow Bhutanese tradition rather than the outside literature: Lhakhang Karpo and Lhakhang Nagpo in Haa are usually counted among the 108 as well, which makes four in this country and settles the argument in the same direction. Nobody built on a single day can be first.

It is a good story, and it is also a map: the whole 108-temple scheme is a way of describing a Buddhist world laid over a pre-Buddhist one, with the older thing still underneath, still needing to be held down.

When to go, and how it fits your day

Early morning is best, when local people are walking the circuit and turning the prayer wheels. There is no season that changes it — this is a year-round, any-weather half-hour.

It sits about ten minutes from Paro town on the road towards Drugyel Dzong, which makes it an easy pairing with either. Most commonly it goes with Rinpung Dzong and the National Museum as a Paro town morning.

The other placement is better: the afternoon of the day you climb Tiger’s Nest. You come down off the mountain with your legs gone and half an hour of daylight left, and this is the right size and the right temperature of thing to end on. Our Tiger’s Nest guide already sends people here for exactly that reason.

See things to do in Paro for how everything in the valley compares.

What to wear, and what you can photograph

Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off inside. This is a working temple with a steady stream of local worshippers, not a museum.

No photography inside the temples. The courtyard, the trees and the outer walls are fine. Walk the circuit clockwise.

The courtyard is level and easy. There are a few steps up into each of the two temples, and no way round them.

A little history

The founding is 659, or “the 7th century” if you prefer your dates the way the sources actually hold them. Pema Lingpa (1450–1521) uncovered and restored the temple; Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal took it over in 1644.

In the 1830s the 25th Je Khenpo, Sherab Gyaltshen, restored and re-consecrated it and added the golden roof and further buildings — the work of the penlop of Paro alongside him. Sources put that restoration at 1836–38 and the roof at 1839, which is almost certainly one project described from two ends.

The Guru Lhakhang followed in the twentieth century. Our own page carried 1968 for years; Wikipedia says 1971. Same queen, same building, three years apart, and nothing found settles it — so this page credits the people and not the year. It is a small thing, but a date nobody can defend is exactly what an answer engine will repeat forever.