Hongtsho: A Village Between Places

Hongtsho is a small village on the highway that runs from Thimphu to eastern Bhutan. Most people stop here for a hot meal and then drive on. But this little village holds a long and layered story.

A summer home

Long ago, before the highway, Hongtsho was a summer home. It belonged to the Toebs, people from Toebesa near Wangdue. Today that drive takes about two hours. Back then it was a much longer journey on foot. The Toebs came up to Hongtsho when the season called for it, and went back down later. From the very beginning, this was a place people came to and left.

You can still see this in the land. There are many ruins of old rammed-earth houses across the area. They show that people settled here and moved away again and again, in waves, over many years.

A new home for refugees

In the early 1960s, the village changed. After the 1959 uprising in Tibet and the flight of the Dalai Lama, many Tibetans crossed into Bhutan. Bhutan agreed to take in about four thousand Tibetan settlers and give them land. Some of that land was in Hongtsho.

So today Hongtsho is a mixed village, with both Toeb and Tibetan roots. The older Tibetan families still speak Tibetan. They still remember the hard journey out of Tibet during the crisis, and they still tell those stories.

Food on the road

Hongtsho is known along the highway for its bathup, a Tibetan flat noodle soup. The small eateries are run by families of Tibetan descent, and the food comes straight from their roots, served hot and simple to people on a long drive. A bowl of noodles here is more than a meal. It is a small piece of culture, kept alive by the families who carried it across the border.

The crematorium by the river

Below the highway, down by the river, is Hongtsho Drue Thrue, the village crematorium. It is the closest one to the main crematorium in Thimphu. Families come here when they want to do the last rites their own way, bringing their own monks and choosing their own spiritual guides. The village is small, but this ground is deeply sacred.

There is a clear order to the village. The crematorium sits low, by the water. The temples sit high, on the ridge. In Bhutan, placing temples up high shows how important they are.

The temples on the ridge

The Toeb temple is Phendey Lhakhang. Every year, the descendants of Toebesa come back to it for the village festival, with mask dances, food, and prayers. It is the old habit of returning, still alive.

Hongtsho also has a Tibetan monastery, and the area holds many quiet meditation spots where people come for stillness.

A quiet place today

Recently, a five-star resort called Mani Ratna has come to Hongtsho. It has turned the village into a peaceful, meditative space.

This is the heart of Hongtsho. For as long as anyone can remember, it has been a place people arrive at, rest in, and carry something away from. The reasons change, but the village keeps doing the same thing. It holds the space between one place and the next.