Dechen Phodrang

Dechen Phodrang is the state monastic school at the top of Gaden Lam, north of Thimphu, on the site of the city’s original dzong. Around 450 boys board and study here. Allow about 30 minutes; entry is included in your tour.

What it’s like

A school, not a monument — and that is the reason to come. Around 450 student monks, most of them children, work through an eight-year course here with a teaching staff of about fifteen. Go in the late afternoon and you will hear several classes reciting at once from different rooms, which is a sound that stays with people longer than most of what they photograph in Thimphu.

The Guru Lhakhang holds 12th-century paintings, monitored by UNESCO and since restored, and there is a large figure of Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal on the upper floor beside a goenkhang, a protector chapel, which by custom only men may enter.

Why the site matters

This is where Thimphu’s first dzong stood: the Do-Ngön Dzong, the “blue stone dzong”, built in 1216 by Lama Gyalwa Lhanangpa. The Zhabdrung took it over in 1641 and renamed it Tashichhodzong — the name and the function later moved downriver to the building that carries them today, Tashichho Dzong. So the fortress that runs Bhutan traces its line back to this quiet hillside, not the other way round.

Dechen Phodrang means palace of great bliss. Punakha Dzong’s full name, Pungthang Dewachen Phodrang, means much the same thing — a different building entirely, and the two get muddled online.

How it fits your day

Ten minutes north of the town centre at the head of Gaden Lam, which puts it at the end of the Wangditse hike if you walk that one out rather than back. Photography needs asking about: these are children at school, and being visited is not the same as being on display.

See things to do in Thimphu for how everything compares.