Talakha Goemba (also Tashi Drukgyal Goemba) is a hilltop monastery at around 3,100 metres in the hills south of Thimphu, Bhutan. Of medieval origin and remodelled in the 1830s by the 25th Je Khenpo, it commands sweeping views of the Thimphu valley and is the goal of a popular day hike.
Talakha Goemba (also known as Tashi Drukgyal Goemba) is a hilltop Buddhist monastery perched at about 3,100 metres in the hills south of Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, commanding wide views over the Thimphu valley.[1]
History
Local tradition attributes the monastery's founding to the fifteenth century, and a legend connects it to the lama Shakya Gyaltsen — though the chronology of that account is uncertain. The present buildings are more reliably dated to the 1830s, when the complex was rebuilt or remodelled by the 25th Je Khenpo, Sherab Gyaltsen.[2]
The temple
The two-storeyed temple enshrines as its central images the Dueysum Sangay — the Buddhas of the past, present and future — alongside a representation of the Zhabdrung. Among its treasures is a set of the Kanjur, the Buddhist canon, written on paper said to have been made from the bark of a single Daphne tree.[2]
Access
Talakha is reached either by a rough mountain road or on foot, and the climb to it has become one of the better-known day hikes around Thimphu, ascending through pine forest from the valley floor near Simtokha to the monastery and the ridgeline beyond.[1]
References
See also
Trongsa District
Trongsa District (Dzongkha: ཀྲོང་གསར་རྫོང་ཁག) is a district in central Bhutan of immense historical significance, home to Trongsa Dzong, the ancestral seat of the Wangchuck dynasty that has ruled Bhutan since 1907. Positioned at the geographic heart of the country, Trongsa served as the strategic link between western and eastern Bhutan for centuries.
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Phibsoo Wildlife Sanctuary (also spelled Phipsoo) is a protected area of about 269 square kilometres in southern Bhutan, straddling Sarpang and Dagana districts on the Indian border. It is the only place in Bhutan with natural sal forest and a wild population of chital deer, and forms part of a transboundary conservation landscape with Royal Manas National Park.
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