Haa Valley

Tradition holds that the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo released two pigeons, one white and one black, to choose sites for two of the 108 temples he built in a single day. The white pigeon settled at the foot of three hills, and Lhakhang Karpo, the White Temple, now stands there as the valley's largest temple and the seat of its monk body and of Ap Chundu, Haa's guardian deity. The black pigeon came down a little further north, where Lhakhang Nagpo, the Black Temple, sits over a sacred spring.

Behind the temples rise Meri Puensum, three near-identical hills revered as the bodhisattvas of wisdom, power and compassion. On a cliff above Katsho village is Juneydrak, sometimes called the Tiger's Nest of Haa, where Guru Rinpoche is said to have subdued a demon and where the Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön is believed to have left a footprint in the rock. A few nuns look after it, and the walk up through forest is the finest short hike in the valley.

Haa lies on Bhutan's western edge, with Tibet to the north and the Chumbi Valley and Sikkim close by, and its high passes were once trade routes in every direction. It is the ancestral home of the Dorji family, the line of the Royal Grandmother, Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck. Gongzim Ugyen Dorji, the first governor of Haa, built the valley's fortress, Wangchuk Lo Dzong, completing it in 1915 after an earlier dzong burned.

After the war between India and China in 1962, the dzong became the base of the Indian Military Training Team, which it remains, and Haa stayed closed to foreign visitors for four more decades. It opened only in 2002, the last district in Bhutan to do so. Today the uniforms and checkpoints in town are a reminder of how close the border is. On the road in from Chhuzom stands Dobji Dzong, built in 1531 on a ridge above the river and for many years used as a prison, now home to a small monastic school.

The valley is too high and cold for much rice, so buckwheat is the staple. Its best-known form is hoentoe, dumplings filled with turnip leaves, cheese and perilla seed, made in quantity for Lomba, Haa's own new year in early winter, when children go door to door singing for good fortune. Herders keep yaks on the high pastures and make cheese and butter, and the farmhouses still burn wood stoves through the long, frosty winters.

Most of the district's high north lies within the Jigme Khesar Strict Nature Reserve, closed to visitors and almost uninhabited apart from a few migrating yak herders. Far to the south, in June 2026, the critically endangered white-bellied heron was recorded for the first time on the Amochhu river in Sangbaykha, the furthest west the bird is known today. Closer to town, villagers built the Panorama Trail in 2021 and run eco camps and homestays, so much of what visitors spend stays in the valley.