Rangshikhar Goenpa

Rangshikhar Goenpa sits eleven kilometres uphill from Trashigang Pam, up through Chir pine forest. It is the seat — and the residence — of Togden Jigme Chogyal Rinpoche, born 1936 and known everywhere as Rangshikhar Rinpoche. Allow an hour to an hour and a half there, plus the drive; entry is included in your tour.

What is up there

A living centre around a teacher, which is a different proposition from a restored dzong.

Rinpoche studied under a number of masters and is known in the east for initiations and empowerments, and — in the accounts people give of him locally — for healing. He oversaw the building of a large Buddha statue and others at the goenpa. After their consecration, the local account goes, holy water began to flow from the base of the statues. That is what is said there. We are passing it on as that rather than as something we can stand behind.

Whether you are received is a separate question from whether the goenpa is open, and neither is published. Ask us and we will check before you drive up.

The drive, and what we had wrong

Our own page and our own comparison table said this was a couple of hours’ drive each way, and put half a day against it.

It is eleven kilometres. Uphill and slow, but eleven kilometres — well under an hour on that road. A guest reading the old version would have written off a morning for what is a stop, and might reasonably have skipped it.

We are not replacing one guess with another: nobody publishes a drive time, so this page gives the distance, which is sourced, and asks you to ask us for the minutes. The drive itself is genuinely good — Chir pine most of the way up, and the valley opening behind you.

What we removed

Three things this page used to say, none of which we can source:

• that Rinpoche spends his time in the mountains away from the goenpa — the one substantive account of the place describes it as his residence, where local people come for blessings;
• that his son and daughter-in-law look after it;
• that it also serves as an old age home.

The last one may well be true — it reads like something told to us by someone who had been. But we could not find it anywhere, and we would rather ask our own guides and put it back with confidence than leave it standing because it sounds right.

Visiting

Road to the door, then steps. Shoulders and knees covered, long sleeves, shoes off inside. Photograph the outside and not the inside — and not Rinpoche, without asking.

See things to do in Trashigang for how this fits the rest of the district; it pairs naturally with Rangjung if you want a day of the district’s living monastic life rather than its fortresses.