Paro Tshechu

Paro Tshechu is one of Bhutan's largest religious festivals, held over five spring days in the courtyard of Rinpung Dzong, a seventeenth-century fortress built by the first Zhabdrung above the Paro valley. Monks perform masked cham dances honoring Guru Rinpoche, and the festival closes with a pre-dawn unfurling of a massive appliqued thongdrol across the dzong's facade, viewed by thousands before it is rolled away by mid-morning.

Rinpung Dzong, whose name translates roughly as fortress on a heap of jewels, was built in 1644 under the first Zhabdrung, Ngawang Namgyal, on the site of an earlier fortress, and it has served ever since as both the administrative seat of Paro district and one of the most photographed buildings in Bhutan, its whitewashed walls and sweeping wooden galleries rising above the Paro valley near the river.