A tshechu is not a performance put on for visitors. It is a religious festival, held each year in honour of Guru Rinpoche, where monks and laymen dance the sacred cham in heavy brocade and carved masks, and the whole district comes dressed in its finest to receive blessings. Few are as dramatic as Punakha’s, where the Drubchen re-enacts a seventeenth-century victory over Tibetan forces with local militia, the pazaps, in full battle dress.
This journey times your days in Punakha for the festival, with the evenings free for an introduction to the pazaps themselves. Either side, you walk to hidden monasteries, spend time with the scholars of Tango, cross into the quiet Haa valley and finish with Tiger’s Nest and a hot-stone bath.
