Buckwheat kitchen and yathra looms

Bumthang's valleys sit too high and cold for much rice, so buckwheat has long been a staple. Your guide can arrange a session in a farmhouse kitchen: flour is pressed through a wooden extruder to make puta, buckwheat noodles tossed with mustard oil, chilli and spring onion, and batter is spread thin on a griddle for khuli pancakes, eaten with ezay chilli paste or butter. Other dishes may include hoentoe dumplings or local cheese.

Then drive about 30 minutes west to Chhume valley. Here, at roadside workshops and in front of houses, women weave yathra, a woven wool cloth whose patterns are made in the loom, on back-strap and frame looms. Yathra is made from sheep's wool, sometimes yak hair, coloured with natural or chemical dyes, and sewn into jackets, blankets and cushion covers.

Watch quietly and ask before photographing weavers. A good piece may take weeks; prices reflect that, and bargaining hard is not customary. Look for even weave and tight edges. If time allows, stop at the Bumthang Swiss cheese factory or the Red Panda brewery in Jakar, Bhutan's only brewery, which makes an unfiltered wheat beer.