We’re excited to share that this summer’s Exploration Bhutan group will have the opportunity to attend the Haa Summer Festival! This lively event, held each year in the high alpine Haa Valley—which has only been open to visitors since the early 2000s—is a celebration of Bhutanese culture, cuisine, and nomadic lifestyles.
Festival attendees have the opportunity to experience masked dancing performances, listen to folk music, witness expert demonstrations of traditional archery and javelin throwing, sample local cuisines, and watch master weavers, sculptors, and artists at work. This festival is a highlight of Bhutan’s festival calendar and we are tremendously excited that our Putney group will experience it!
Our group’s journey into Haa will take us over the Chele La Pass, a stunning mountain environment that is a pilgrimage site for Bhutanese and travelers from India and abroad.
In addition to the festival, we’ll explore the Haa Valley, an ancient and sacred landscape, where farmers cultivate their fields in traditional embroidered dress and monks stroll through villages in robes.
Beyond Haa, we will visit Punakha, a subtropical region formerly the seat of Bhutan’s royalty, and Phobjikha, a pristine glacial valley at the base of the Black Mountains and home to Gangtey Gonpa, a 450-year-old monastery. The group also visits Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital city and hub of economic and civic life, as well as Paro. The culminating experience is an overnight trek to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, a spectacular temple complex perched on a cliff 3,000 feet above the valley floor.
If you would like to learn more about this once-in-a-lifetime Putney adventure in Bhutan, please give us a call at 802-387-5000. As of this writing, only limited space is available, so we encourage you to apply now!
