Druk Path Trek

Your guide meets you at the airport. After lunch we visit the National Museum in Ta Dzong and walk down to Rinpung Dzong. The trail you will take in two days' time starts on the hillside just above the museum, and your guide will point it out.

The walk to Taktsang is the best preparation for the trek. It takes you up to 3,120 m and back down to sleep, which is what the body needs in order to adjust. In the afternoon we check your kit, and your guide goes through the route and the daily routine in camp.

We meet the crew and the pack ponies above the National Museum. The first day is a steady climb of more than 1,000 m, first past farmhouses and apple orchards and then through blue pine and fir. The camp is in a clearing just below Jele Dzong, a small fortress on the ridge. If the sky is clear you can see the Paro valley behind you and Jomolhari to the north.

We look into Jele Dzong before setting off, if the caretaker is there to open it. The trail follows the ridge through thick rhododendron forest, climbing and dropping gently. You may meet yak herders, whose black tents stand in the clearings. Camp is on open pasture.

The path keeps to the crest of the ridge. On a clear day this is the finest stretch of the trek for mountain views, with Jomolhari and Jichu Drake in sight to the north. A descent at the end of the day brings us to Jimilang Tsho, a long dark lake, where we camp on the shore.

The trail climbs away from the lake through dwarf rhododendron and passes a second lake, Janye Tsho. This is yak country, and you pass the herders' stone shelters along the way. We camp beside Simkotra Tsho, the highest camp of the trek. Nights here are cold in every season.

A gradual climb leads to the highest pass of the route, at about 4,200 m, marked with cairns and prayer flags. From here, in good weather, the view takes in Gangkar Puensum, the highest mountain in Bhutan. The Thimphu valley then opens far below, and the path drops to Phajoding, a group of temples and retreat huts on the hillside.

We visit the temples at Phajoding and then walk down through blue pine forest to the road at Motithang, on the upper edge of Thimphu. The descent takes about three hours. Your driver is waiting, and by lunchtime you are at the hotel with a hot shower. In the late afternoon we visit Tashichho Dzong.

After six days on foot, a day by road. We cross Dochu La and its 108 chortens and come down into the warmth of Punakha, more than 2,800 m below the trek's highest camp. We walk to Chimi Lhakhang and visit Punakha Dzong.

We drive back to Paro, stopping in Thimphu for lunch and for the Buddha Dordenma. In Paro we visit Kyichu Lhakhang and have a last dinner together.

Your guide and driver take you to the airport after breakfast.