Ura Yakchoe — April / May
Ura Valley in Bumthang is the oldest inhabited valley in Bhutan, and its annual Yakchoe festival is rooted in a story as simple and strange as the valley itself. According to legend, a mysterious lama once visited an old woman and asked only for water. When she returned, he had vanished, leaving behind a sack on her doorstep. Inside was a sacred relic, which has been passed down through her descendants ever since and is brought out and displayed publicly once a year, during the Ura Yakchoe.
Held over five days, usually in late April or early May of the third Bhutanese lunar month, the festival begins with a procession carrying the Vajrapani relic from Gaythen Temple to Ura, received by the village’s priests across open fields and meadows. Sacred mask dances, folk dances, and a Thongdrel display follow over the course of the festival, alongside a warm Bhutanese tradition of visiting local homes to share food and ara, the local barley spirit. Agricultural work in the valley stops entirely for the festival’s duration, as the entire community gathers to honour Guru Rinpoche, whose second visit to Ura is said to have saved the village from an epidemic.
For visitors, the Ura Yakchoe is an encounter with rural Bhutan at its most intimate: a small valley, a centuries-old relic, and a community that has never stopped celebrating both.
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