Jakar
The market town at the centre of Bumthang — dzong on the ridge, buckwheat fields below, and the country's cheese, beer, and honey all made within a few kilometres.
- Altitude
- 2,580 m
- Coordinates
- 27.548°, 90.752°
Current Weather
Jakar is the town where the four valleys of Bumthang do their business: a single main street of timber-fronted shops in the Chokhor valley, a dzong on the ridge above, and farmhouses scattered across the buckwheat flats in every direction. If Bumthang is Bhutan's spiritual heartland, Jakar is its kitchen table.
Fortress of the white bird
Jakar Dzong takes its name — Jakar, "white bird" — from the legend of its founding: a roosting white bird settled on this spur while lamas were choosing a site for a monastery, and the omen decided it. The present fortress dates from 1667 and is unusually long and narrow, following the ridgeline, with an unmistakable 50-metre utse (central tower) and a covered passage running down the hillside to a protected water supply — the detail that let it survive a siege. It remains the administrative and monastic seat of the Bumthang district.
Swiss farm, cheese, and Red Panda beer
Jakar is also, improbably, the centre of Bhutanese artisan food. In the 1970s a Swiss development worker, Fritz Maurer, settled in the nearby village of Karsumphe and introduced cheesemaking, brewing, and honey production to the valley. His legacy is still operating: the Swiss Farm and Bumthang Brewery produce Gouda- and Emmental-style cheese and the country's best-known beer, Red Panda — an unfiltered, cloudy weissbier sold across Bhutan and brewed nowhere else. Local buckwheat turns up as khur-le pancakes and puta noodles on every menu in town.
Walking out from town
Jakar's real pleasure is that the sacred sites are within walking distance of the hotel. Jambay Lhakhang — one of the 7th-century temples attributed to Songtsen Gampo, and host each autumn to the fire-lit Jambay Lhakhang Drup — sits a short walk up the valley, with Kurjey Lhakhang and the suspension bridge to Tamshing beyond it. Longer routes leave from the same fields: the Bumthang Owl Trek climbs into the forest above town, and the wider Bumthang trail area collects the valley's multi-day options.
Give it two nights. Jakar is 68 km beyond Trongsa over Yotong La, and the town has the best hotel and restaurant choice east of Punakha — which makes it the natural base for everything in central Bhutan.