Samtse Town

Samtse is the headquarters of Bhutan’s far southwestern district, on the plain at about 380 metres, a few minutes from the Indian border. It is a working border and market town rather than a sight, and we would rather say so than let you find out on a detour.

What is actually in the town

A Buddhist monastery, a stupa and a Hindu mandir all stand in the middle of Samtse — the stupa and the mandir barely a minute apart, the monastery about four hundred metres west of them. That is Bhutan’s southern border in one small town: two religions, three buildings, unremarked.

Ask us before you plan on going inside either one — nothing published says what a visitor may enter, and we would rather find out for you than guess.

The college on the edge of town

Samtse College of Education is the reason most Bhutanese know the name. The Royal University of Bhutan says it opened as a teacher training institute on 29 May 1968 with 41 students, and has since put over 5,000 graduates into the country’s schools. It is one of Bhutan’s two colleges of education — the other is at Paro. It is a working campus rather than a visitor attraction, and nothing published says what anyone may see of it.

What a stop here is worth

Honestly: we cannot tell you, because no trip on our published list stops here. Putting a half-day on this page would be inventing the reason to come.

Everything we run is private and built to order, so if Samtse matters to you — family, work, the border, the college — tell us and we will look into it.

Come between November and March. This is border-plain heat and humidity rather than valley weather, and the monsoon runs June to August — the national weather service’s Samtse record puts July close to a metre of rain. See things to do in Samtse for the rest of the district, and entering Bhutan by road for what the border post here does and does not do.