Trongsa Tshechu

Trongsa Dzong is the ancestral seat from which Bhutan's first two kings governed before ascending the throne, and its Tshechu is one of the country's grander five-day festivals, filling the dzong's northern courtyard with masked cham performed from the 7th to the 12th day of the eleventh lunar month. The festival typically follows an eleven-day Goenpai Drupchen held earlier in the same dzong, so visitors sometimes catch both rituals within one trip to central Bhutan.

Trongsa Dzong was built to control the only trade route linking western and eastern Bhutan, and for generations the governors who ruled from it, the Trongsa Penlops, went on to become the country's kings; Ugyen Wangchuck held the post before his 1907 coronation as Bhutan's first monarch, and the crown prince still traditionally serves as Trongsa Penlop before inheriting the throne.