Travel and Tourism in Bhutan

The Tsechu Festivals: Where the Sacred and the Spectacular Meet

The tsechu festivals are among the most extraordinary public events in Asia, and for many visitors they represent the most vivid and memorable experience of Bhutan. The word tsechu means the tenth day of the month in the Tibetan lunar calendar, and the tsechu festivals are held annually in each district's dzong, typically in the autumn or spring, to commemorate events in the life of Guru Rinpoche and to transmit the blessings of the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition to the assembled community. They are simultaneously religious ceremonies, cultural performances, community gatherings, and spectacular theatrical events, and the combination of sacred significance and sheer visual drama makes them unlike anything else in the world.

The centerpiece of the tsechu is the cham dance, a form of sacred masked dance performed by monks who have trained for years in the precise movements, gestures, and spiritual significance of each dance. The masks are extraordinary works of art in themselves, made of papier-mache and painted in vivid colors, depicting the faces of protective deities, demons, wisdom teachers, and the many figures that populate the Vajrayana cosmological universe. The costumes are equally elaborate, with brocade robes in rich colors and headdresses of silk and peacock feathers. The dances tell stories from Buddhist mythology, depicting the defeat of evil, the triumph of compassion, and the cycle of death and rebirth that is the central preoccupation of the Buddhist worldview. For the monks who perform them, the dances are acts of meditation and spiritual practice. For the audience of Bhutanese villagers and pilgrims who have traveled from across the district to attend, they are both entertainment and direct encounter with the sacred.

On the final morning of a major tsechu, the most spectacular event takes place: the unfurling of the thondrel, an enormous appliqued silk thangka painting that is large enough to cover the entire facade of a dzong. These thangkas depict Guru Rinpoche, the Buddha, or other figures of the highest religious significance, and they are kept rolled up throughout the year, brought out only for this annual unfurling. The sight of the enormous thangka unrolling as dawn breaks over the dzong, while thousands of devotees press forward to receive its blessing before the sun rises high enough to damage it and it must be rolled away, is one of the most powerful visual and spiritual experiences available anywhere in the world. Tears are not uncommon. Neither are the prayers of people who have walked for days from remote villages to be present for the blessing.

The Paro Tsechu, held in March or April, is the largest and most internationally attended of the festivals, drawing visitors from around the world alongside thousands of Bhutanese pilgrims. The Thimphu Tsechu, held in September or October, is equally spectacular and offers the advantage of being located in the capital, where access and accommodation are somewhat easier to arrange. The Punakha Drubchen, held in February before the main Punakha Tsechu in March, reenacts a seventeenth-century battle and is one of the most dramatic and historically specific of all Bhutanese festivals. The Haa Festival in July celebrates the culture of the Haa valley in the remote western corner of Bhutan, which was closed to outsiders until 2002 and retains a distinctive cultural character. The Black-Necked Crane Festival at Gangte Monastery in the Phobjikha Valley in November coincides with the arrival of the sacred black-necked cranes from their Tibetan breeding grounds and is one of the most unusual and moving events in Bhutan's cultural calendar.

UNESCO Status and Cultural Heritage Protection

Bhutan has not yet secured any inscriptions on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which means it currently has no sites officially recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO. This may surprise visitors who have seen the extraordinary architectural and natural wealth of the country, and it reflects the reality that the UNESCO inscription process is lengthy, technically demanding, and requires the preparation of extensive documentation and management plans that small countries with limited bureaucratic capacity sometimes find difficult to complete.

Bhutan does maintain several nominations on its Tentative List, the formal preliminary step toward World Heritage inscription. These tentative nominations include cultural landscape sites and natural areas that would almost certainly qualify for inscription under the World Heritage criteria if the full nomination process were completed. The Haa Cultural Landscape, the Phobjikha Valley with its black-necked crane habitat, and areas associated with the Jigme Dorji National Park system are among the sites that have been proposed for tentative listing. The completion of formal World Heritage nominations for sites in Bhutan would be a significant step in the international recognition of the country's extraordinary cultural and natural heritage, and the absence of inscribed sites from the current World Heritage List should in no way be taken as a measure of the actual significance or quality of what Bhutan contains.

Bhutan's approach to cultural heritage protection does not in any case depend on external validation from UNESCO. The laws requiring traditional architectural styles on all new construction, the mandated use of national dress in official settings, the constitutional protection of cultural resilience as one of the nine domains of Gross National Happiness, and the active support for traditional arts, crafts, and performing traditions through national institutions all reflect a domestic commitment to heritage protection that is in many respects more comprehensive and more effective than the typical regime associated with UNESCO listing. Bhutan has chosen to protect its cultural heritage because doing so reflects its own values, not because an international body has told it to.

The dzong system, which Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal created in the seventeenth century and which has been maintained and rebuilt over the following four centuries, is in itself one of the most remarkable examples of living architectural heritage in the world. The twenty dzongs that serve as district administrative and religious centers across Bhutan are not museum pieces but functional buildings, occupied by monks, administrators, and the institutions of both religious and civil governance. They are maintained according to traditional building techniques, using rammed earth walls, interlocking timber joints, and traditional pigments and painted decorations that have not changed significantly since the first dzongs were built. When a dzong is damaged by fire or earthquake or flood, as has happened numerous times over the centuries, it is rebuilt using the same techniques, the same materials, and the same designs, so that the living tradition of dzong construction is maintained as well as the buildings themselves.