Best Time To Visit Thimphu

March to May is the second window, warming steadily, with rhododendrons out across the hillsides. April and May are both still dry.

By late May the monsoon is arriving. Bhutan's southwest monsoon runs from about mid-April to September, so the end of May is the ragged edge of this window rather than the middle of it.

September is usually sold as part of the autumn window, and it is a different trip. It carries close to twice October's rain and roughly sixty times November's.

It is also the expensive half. Thimphu Tshechu falls in late September and lifts hotel and Paro flight prices, so you pay peak rates for the wettest part of the good season.

July is the wettest month of the year, with August close behind. Cloud sits low, so the mountain views that justify the trip are often not there at all.

Landslides and road blocks are the bigger problem. Bhutan travel is road travel between Thimphu, Punakha and Paro, so rain costs you days of the itinerary rather than only the scenery.

These are dry, quiet months, and the days are milder than most people expect, with afternoon highs in the mid teens.

The nights are the cold part. January averages a couple of degrees below zero overnight and the record low is close to minus nine, so pack for the evenings rather than the days.

Thimphu Tshechu is one of the two largest festivals in Bhutan and falls in late September, on the tenth day of a lunar month, so the date shifts each year.

Confirm it with Bhutan's tourism department before booking. It fills the Thimphu hotels and the Paro flights at the same time, so build the trip around the dates rather than assuming them.

Thimphu sits at about 2,320 metres, and almost every Bhutan itinerary is a road itinerary. Paro, Punakha and the passes between them are joined by mountain highway.

That makes the monsoon a scheduling risk, not just a weather one. October and November are the safest months for a tight itinerary. Note too that the Tiger's Nest hike is at Paro, a separate day trip, not something to slot into a wet Thimphu afternoon. Bhaktapur and Nagarkot in Nepal share the same clear post-monsoon window.