Paro Tshechu

The festival

The Paro Tshechu is, along with the Thimphu festival, Bhutan's most famous religious festival. For five days, the court of the Rinpung Dzong — the fortress-monastery that dominates the Paro Valley — is filled with Bhutanese families in party costumes (gho and kira hand woven) who came to attend the sacred Ham dances: monks and laity dancers in silk brocades and carved masks replay the lives and visions of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava), who introduced Buddhism in Bhutan in the eighth century.

The highlight, the last day of dawn, is the deployment of the Guru Thongdrel, a huge wall wall applied whose only view is considered to be freeing from errors. The Tshechus date back to the seventeenth century, under Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the lunifier of Bhutan.