Jakar · BT

Jambay Lhakhang

Jambay Lhakhang is a small, whitewashed, walled temple on the road north of Jakar in the Choekhor Valley of Bumthang, and one of the two oldest temples in Bhutan. Tradition dates its founding to 659 CE, when the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo supposedly raised 108 temples in a single day to pin down a giant demoness sprawled across the Himalaya; Jambay holds her left knee in place. Like Kyichu Lhakhang in Paro, it shares that founding day, which is why neither can honestly claim to be Bhutan's oldest. What makes a visit feel special is not a date on a placard but the sense of thirteen continuous centuries of use. The temple is named for Jampa, the Maitreya Buddha of the future, whose statue stands in the oldest inner sanctum, and it has been consecrated, repaired and enlarged by every generation that followed. Guru Rinpoche meditated here in the 8th century, and the Indian-born king Sindhu Raja, healed nearby at Kurjey, is credited with restoring this temple in turn. Most days you will share the courtyard with local pilgrims walking the prayer wheels, lighting butter lamps and prostrating in the wooden grooves worn smooth by their predecessors.