Unlike in Thailand, Bhutanese monks are in the monkhood for life. The Tongsa Monastery is as impressive inside as it is from the outside. You can feel its great age as you walk across worn stone courtyards and step upon wide plank floors. Trankar-like paintings, some quite ancient, adorn the inner walls. Embroidered drapes hanging from lofty ceilings, and altars with heavy silver trays and bowls are flanked by enormous ivory tusks, cracked and yellow with age.
Pillars are square timbers and painted red.
Huge wooden doors swing not on hinges but on pins. Chambers are dark and ladders that connect the levels are steep and menacing to climb. Everywhere are large brass bells and gongs. In small hidden side rooms, monks chant, doing their pujas, and in the stone courtyards blackbirds and crows disrupt the silence with the heavy flapping of their wings and their mocking cries. You can spend the night in an inn overlooking the valley.