Kyichu Lhakhang

Kyichu Lhakhang sits among fields a few kilometres north of Paro town, low and white and easy to drive past. It is one of the oldest surviving temples in Bhutan, and the flagstones of its inner courtyard have been worn into hollows by prostrations.

The oldest of the two temples

Tradition holds that the older of the two buildings was founded in the 7th century by the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo, as one of a set of temples raised across the Himalaya to pin down a demoness whose body was said to lie across the whole region — the same tradition that accounts for Jambay Lhakhang in Bumthang. Whatever the history behind the story, the shrine it protects is genuinely ancient: a seated Jowo Jampa (Shakyamuni Buddha) of the same lineage as the Jowo of Lhasa, dark with centuries of butter lamps.

A second temple was added alongside it in 1968 by the Royal Grandmother, Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck, built in matching style so that the pair now reads as one complex rather than as old and new.

What you actually see

A long wall of prayer wheels runs along the approach, turned by everyone who passes. Inside the courtyard stand two orange trees that local belief says fruit out of season. The interior is dim and close, and photography is not permitted in the shrine halls.

The temple is small, so a visit is short — twenty minutes to half an hour — and it is almost always paired with Taktsang or with the drive up the valley to Drukgyel. That pairing is why it appears on nearly every western Bhutan itinerary: it is the quiet counterpoint to the cliff.