Taktsang hermitage (Tiger’s Lair) is a popular tourist destination in the country. The authors of Lonely Planet recommended Taktsang in a week-long tour plan to Bhutan in travel 2020 where Bhutan was the top country to visit in 2020.
- Taktsang is an impressive sight on the face of a sheer 1,000-m cliff above the Paro
Valley. The motorable trail through the pine forest for 3-km from the highway ends at a
parking area of 2,600-m. Horses can be arranged on request, but pilgrims prefer to hike
uphill which would take about an hour.
- The trail ascends steeply from the ridge with railings and safety netting for protection.
The narrow trail to the hermitage gives magnificent panoramic views of the hermitage
and Paro Valley.
- Taktsang is among the 13 awesome tiger lairs visited by Guru Padmakara who introduced
Buddhism in Bhutan and said to have flown there from north-east Bhutan on the back of
a tigress, to subdue negative spiritual forces in the form of tiger-riding (Dorje Drolod)
emanation during the eighth century.
- In 853, Langchhen Pelgyi Senge, a Tibetan student of one of Padmasambhava, meditated
in the main cave at Taktsang, which later came to be known as Taktsang Pelphuk, after
his own name. A newly restored stupa at the entrance to this cave contains his mortal
remains.
- There are eight caves that surround and live in the monastery of “Tholu Phuk” and “Pel
Phuk” is worth visiting – the caves in which Guru Rimpoche visited and meditated.
- A waterfall plunges down the chasm alongside a retreat hermitage associated with Guru
Padmakara. A temple dedicated to the water spirits marks the place where he brought
forth a spring of water through his spiritual powers.
- Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel who formed the new Bhutanese state visited Taktsang in
the company of his mentor Rigdzin Nyingpo, and took possession of the site, offering it
to Jinpa Gyeltsen, a brother of the fourth regent Tendzin Rabgye.
- When Zhabdrung performed elaborate Vajrakila rituals, he experienced numerous visions
such as the local deity of Taktshang coming in the form of a black man and offering
Taktshang to him, saying that if he took it, he would ensure that no one could ever steal
- Since then the monastic community holds an annual prayer festival during the fifth
lunar month.
- Many great 11th and 12th-century spiritual masters of Tibet passed periods in profound
meditation and the sacred sites associated with them are around Taktsang.
- His Holiness the 69 th Je Khenpo (The Chief Abbot of the Central Monastic Body of
Bhutan) Gyeshey Gedun Rinchen was born in a cave near Paro Taksang in the Fire Tiger
year (1926) to his mother Tashi Chokey.
- The first complex, the Drubkhang has images of Guru Padmakara in his tiger-tiding aspect Dorje Drolod, Vajrakila, and Guru Padmakara and the cave of meditative attainment (druphuk) where Guru Padmakara stayed in retreat for three months.
- There is an empty chapel, followed by a small doorway that leads to a deep, 6-m crevice
overlooking the valley, according to the legend, which is said to have been the actual tiger’s lair back in the eighth century.
- The renovations were undertaken in the 1950s and 1980s and it completed the more recent restoration in 2004 with Nu 135-million equivalents over USD 2-million after a fire disaster ruined it in 1998.
- The trail through the pine forests towards the monastery has colorful prayer flags lined throughout to guard the temple from evil spirits.
- Visit the cave behind the chapel and select the image of the Tibetan saint Machig Labdron on the right (for a baby girl) or the penis print on the cave wall to the left (for a boy).