The story
Rhododendron Week in Merak and Sakteng Region
Rhododendron Week celebrates the spring bloom across the high-altitude Merak and Sakteng valleys of eastern Bhutan, home to the semi-nomadic Brokpa yak-herding community and their distinctive spider-web-patterned yak-felt hats. Held each April as the region's rhododendron forests flower, the week combines guided highland walks with Brokpa cultural performances, offering a very different Bhutanese landscape and community from the country's dzong-centered festival circuit.
Merak and Sakteng sit in Bhutan's far east near the Arunachal Pradesh border, two of the country's highest and most isolated inhabited valleys, home to the Brokpa, a semi-nomadic yak-herding community whose way of life and dress set them apart from the rest of Bhutan.