Dochula Pass

PeaksThimphu-Punakha Highway,Bhutan

A Bhutanese pass carrying 108 whitewashed shrines for soldiers killed in 2003, facing the highest unclimbed mountain on Earth.

September·Quiet month

Jun–Sep

The monsoon swallows the skyline — cloud climbs off the Punakha valley and the peaks vanish for weeks. Nothing shuts: this is the main Thimphu–Punakha highway, and the temple, chortens and prayer flags stay open in the drifting mist. Come for atmosphere, not mountains.

Year-round The 108 chortens, Druk Wangyal Lhakhang and the prayer flags stand on the ridge at 3,100 m every day of the year; the mountain view, the snow and the blooms come and go.

Dochula carries 108 whitewashed shrines at 3,100 metres on the road between Thimphu and Punakha, in Bhutan, facing a mountain nobody has ever stood on top of. The chortens climb the knoll in three rings — forty-five, thirty-six, twenty-seven — around one taller shrine at the summit, with a stone path threading between them. They went up for the soldiers killed in December 2003, when Bhutan cleared insurgent camps from its southern forests. Inside each one stands a sokshing, a juniper life tree painted red, written over with hymns and wrapped in silk, set in place on a day chosen by astrologers. Up close you can see the hand-painted deities in every whitewashed base. The gold-roofed temple above them was finished in 2008, painted in the old manner but not with the old subjects: among the saints and protectors are the Fourth King in battle, monks bent over laptops, and Druk Air jets. Most travellers give the pass twenty minutes, which is a gamble. Cloud comes up from the Punakha side and can take the whole skyline from you within minutes, then break up just as fast. From October to February the dried air holds the eastern Himalaya on the horizon all morning: Masanggang, Tsendagang, and the broad white mass of Gangkhar Puensum at 7,570 metres. Between June and September you see nothing at all. Two hours of walking north, through hemlock and moss-hung rhododendron, reaches Lungchutse monastery at about 3,600 metres, where the forest falls away and you get the same peaks without the cars. Every 13 December the ground below the temple fills for the Druk Wangyal Tshechu, whose masked dancers are soldiers of the Royal Bhutan Army, in a country where these dances belong to monks. As for the mountain they face: Bhutan opened its high peaks in 1983, and the first expedition sent at Gangkhar Puensum never located it, because the maps were that wrong. The summits were closed again before anyone succeeded. In 1999 a Japanese team, refused the main peak, climbed its northern neighbour from the Tibetan side, stopping two kilometres of ridge short.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Cross early — the skyline is a morning affair. Cloud builds off the Punakha valley as the day warms, and by late morning the peaks are usually gone behind it.
Don't write off a grey arrival. The pass closes and clears within minutes; if the mountains are missing when you park, give it twenty minutes before you get back in the car.
13 December is not an ordinary day here. The tshechu fills the festival ground and the roadside parking with it — come early for a place, or pick another day if you want the pass quiet.
Dress for 3,100 metres, not for the valley. The pass stands some 800 metres above Thimphu and the wind crosses the open ridge unbroken; it bites in the shade even in June.

Things to do

1
Walk the three tiers of 108 chortens
The Druk Wangyal Chortens climb the knoll in rings of 45, 36 and 27 around a taller one at the summit, with a stone path threading between them. Up close you can see the hand-painted deities set into every whitewashed base. The gold-roofed temple above them opens onto murals painted in the style of Bhutan's oldest dzongs.
2
Pick Gangkhar Puensum out of the skyline
On a clear morning the eastern Himalaya lines the horizon north of the pass — Masanggang, Tsendagang, and the broad white mass of Gangkhar Puensum at 7,570 metres, which no one has ever climbed. Weather decides everything here: an arrival in cloud can turn into the full range within the hour.
3
Watch soldiers dance the Druk Wangyal Tshechu
Every 13 December the Royal Bhutan Army performs the masked dances on the ground below the temple — a tshechu danced by soldiers rather than monks, and staged outdoors against the peaks instead of inside a dzong courtyard. The dances were written for the festival in 2011.
4
Hike up to Lungchutse Goemba
A climb of roughly two hours leads north from the pass through hemlock and moss-hung rhododendron to a small monastery on a ridge at about 3,600 metres. The forest falls away at the top and the Himalayan skyline opens the whole way round — the same peaks as from the road, without the cars.

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Nearby

28 km