Changangkha Lhakhang

Changangkha Lhakhang is the oldest temple in Thimphu, on a spur above the town. Families bring newborn children here for a blessing and a name, most mornings of the year. Allow 30–45 minutes. The entry fee is Nu 500, and it is included in your tour.

What actually happens here

Most temples in Bhutan are visited. This one is used.

Children born in Thimphu are brought to Changangkha to be presented to the temple’s protector deity, and the name the child is given comes from the temple — which is why so many Thimphu families of a certain generation share a handful of names. On an ordinary weekday morning you will find parents and grandparents waiting with a baby, a thermos and a bag of offerings, and a monk working through them one at a time.

You are welcome to be there. You are not the reason anyone came, which is what makes it worth going.

What to see inside

The central image is a large bronze Avalokiteshvara — the Buddha of compassion in his eleven-headed, many-armed form, described as self-arisen rather than made. He was the personal deity of Phajo Drugom Zhigpo, the lama who brought the Drukpa Kagyu lineage into Bhutan and whose family founded this temple.

Alongside it is a gönkhang, a protector chapel, and around the outside walls, prayer wheels set into small niches with slate relief carvings between them. Walk the circuit clockwise.

Then go out onto the terraces. The temple sits on a spur, and the view runs in three directions over the whole Thimphu valley — the best free view in the city, and the reason to come up here even if the temple is closed.

Photography is not permitted inside. The terraces are fine.

When to go, and how it fits your day

Morning, if you want to see the families. Any time otherwise; there’s no season that changes it.

It is ten minutes up from Thimphu town on the ridge above the centre, which puts it naturally with the Kawajangsa museums — the Folk Heritage Museum, the National Library and the Zorig Chusum arts school are all on the same hillside — with the takin preserve a few minutes further west.

Dress covers shoulders and knees, and shoes come off inside. There are steps up from the car park, then a level courtyard.

See things to do in Thimphu for how everything compares.

A little history

Phajo Drugom Zhigpo arrived in Bhutan in the 13th century and established the Drukpa Kagyu lineage that still shapes the country’s religious life; he is revered as an emanation of Avalokiteshvara, which is why the temple’s central image is what it is.

The temple was founded in the 13th or 14th century by his family — sources divide between Phajo himself and his son Nyima, and since Phajo died around 1251 the two attributions imply different centuries. We would rather tell you the question is open than pick the confident-sounding answer, which is what most pages about this temple do.