Village Life
Rammed earth farmhouses, buckwheat, butter tea, and an agricultural year that still governs most of the country. The part of Bhutan that is hardest to reach from a hotel.
Around two thirds of Bhutanese still live rurally. The farmhouse is the unit of that life: three storeys of rammed earth and timber, built without nails, animals below, family in the middle, chillies drying on the open top floor.
What a farmhouse visit is
Not a demonstration. You eat what the family is eating, in the room where they eat it, usually sitting on the floor around a low table. There will be ema datshi and red rice and probably suja, the salted butter tea that most visitors try once.
The altar room
Every home has one, and it is the best room in the house. Butter lamps are lit at dusk. It is the clearest demonstration of how little separation exists here between religious practice and ordinary domestic life.
Staying the night
Simple. Bedding on the floor, a shared bathroom, wood smoke. What you get instead of comfort is proximity, which is the thing money cannot buy in Bhutan any more.
Where it appears
- Haa Valley Discovery, 7 days
- Punakha valley walks
- Any journey, on request
Best season
- Autumn for harvest
- Winter for indoor life
- Avoid deep monsoon
Good to know
- Ask before photographing anyone
- Remove shoes indoors
- Bathrooms are basic
Eat where the family eats.
Say village life matters to you and we will build the nights around it.
Design Your Journey→A boutique travel company creating private journeys through Bhutan, Ladakh and Darjeeling.