Private & Luxury Bhutan Tours

Bhutan, planned around what the rules actually require.

Bhutan is not a country you assemble yourself. Every international visitor books through a licensed Bhutanese operator, pays the Sustainable Development Fee before arrival, and needs a licensed guide to enter monasteries, temples and dzongs -- even in Paro and Thimphu. None of this is a formality. Get it wrong and it costs you a day, a monastery you cannot enter, or a permit that has to be sorted out on the ground.

Farbound handles the paperwork, the guide and the route as one booking, not three separate arrangements. You travel in a private vehicle with a guide who knows which dzongs are open which days, when the passes to the Haa Valley or Bumthang are actually worth the drive, and how to pace a country where the good days are three, four and five thousand metres apart.

Start with Paro and Thimphu. Add Punakha and its dzong at the river confluence. Go further into Haa Valley or Bumthang if you have the days. Every route accounts for the altitude, the road time and the fact that Bhutan rewards a slower pace than the map suggests.

Best time to visit Bhutan.

Bhutan does not have a single bad season so much as different reasons to go in each one. Spring and autumn carry the clearest mountain views and the country's major festivals; summer and winter suit travellers who want fewer crowds and are prepared for the trade-offs.