Bhutan does not want too many of you, and that is exactly the point

Our driver meets you at Bagdogra airport and takes the four-hour run south-east through Siliguri's tea gardens to Jaigaon. You walk under the painted Bhutan Gate — wide enough for two trucks and decorated like a temple — and the noise of the Indian highway simply stops. The Bhutanese side of the street is quieter, cleaner, and the shops close on time.

Evening is free at Zangto Pelri temple square, a small monastery complex at the edge of the town grid. We lodge your permit papers tonight so that immigration is first thing, not a wait. Dinner at the hotel: try ema datshi, whole chillies cooked into a cheese sauce that arrives with the red rice whether you order it separately or not.

Immigration first thing — carry your passport or voter card and two passport photos. Once stamped, the highway climbs five thousand feet through cloud forest in three hours. Stop at Kharbandi monastery garden for the last long look back at the Indian plains laid out below the ridge, then buy your first butter tea from the monks' canteen if you are curious and your stomach is open to negotiation.

Thimphu by late afternoon. Drop bags at the hotel and walk Norzin Lam, the main street, end to end — it takes twenty minutes and tells you the whole city. There is no traffic-light junction, only a white-gloved traffic policeman in a booth at the central square who is more photographed than any dzong.

Buddha Dordenma first. The statue is fifty-one metres of gilded bronze sitting above the valley on a ridge at 2,600 metres; inside it are one hundred thousand smaller bronze Buddhas. There is no entry charge and almost no queue before nine. Then down to the Memorial Chorten, where the town's older residents circle clockwise with hand-held prayer wheels from dawn to dusk — join them or watch from the wall, both are correct.

Afternoon: the Motithang takin preserve, where Bhutan's national animal — a cross between a gnu and a goat that looks like an evolutionary argument — grazes in an open enclosure. Then the traditional paper factory on the way back, and Tashichho Dzong at five, just as the army flag ceremony closes the day. This is the building that houses the king's throne room and the summer monastic body, and it is the most photogenic at last light.

The route permit clears in the morning and the road crests Dochula Pass at 3,100 metres. On a clear day — more likely in October than in September — the entire eastern Himalaya sits on the horizon: Masagang, Tsendagang, Gangkar Puensum. The 108 white chortens stand in a ring around the viewpoint. Give it thirty minutes; it earns them.

Descend into the Punakha valley, warmer by ten degrees than Thimphu, where the rice is already harvested by October and the terraces are pale gold. Stop at Chimi Lhakhang: a fifteen-minute walk across the fields to the fertility temple, small, whitewashed, and genuinely visited by pilgrims who are not pretending. Check into the hotel by four; the evening is free.

The whole morning belongs to Punakha Dzong, the old winter capital of the kings, which sits at the exact meeting point of the Pho Chhu and Mo Chhu — the Father River and the Mother River. The approach is over a cantilevered wooden bridge with prayer flags above and cold green water below. Allow two hours inside: the whitewashed courtyards, the gilded assembly hall, the Buddha protected by a thousand hanging thangkas.

Afternoon: walk the 160-metre suspension bridge strung with prayer flags over the Pho Chhu — safe, and the sway is part of it. The optional river rafting on the Mo Chhu is a Grade 2 float through fields and monastery walls; if your group has children or anyone who prefers land, swap it for a farmhouse visit where the host cooks over a bukhari wood stove. Either is worth the two hours.

The return over Dochula gives a second chance at the peaks if cloud covered them on day four. Then the Wang Chhu gorge road down to Paro — narrow, pine-scented, with the occasional chorten at a hairpin. Paro valley opens at 2,200 metres, flat and farmed, with the airport at one end and Bhutan's oldest buildings at the other.

Afternoon at Rinpung Dzong, the fortress-monastery that overlooks Paro town from a spur above the river — enter over a covered cantilever bridge and climb the internal stairs to the courtyard galleries. Then the National Museum in the round watchtower above it, which has the best collection of Bhutanese textiles anywhere and takes forty minutes to cover. Walk the willow-lined main street for dinner; every shopfront is painted by hand.

The day the whole trip points at. Start walking by seven from the car park at 2,400 metres. The trail climbs through blue pine and rhododendron to the cliff-face cafeteria at the halfway point — tea, eggs, a bench with a direct view of Paro Taktsang hanging three hundred metres above you. The final section drops into a ravine, crosses a waterfall on a stone bridge, and climbs the stone staircase to the monastery entrance at 3,120 metres. Allow five to six hours round trip. Ponies carry you to the halfway cafeteria for a negotiated rate; beyond that it is steps.

The monastery itself is four temples built directly into the cliffside, connected by steep internal staircases. Photography is not permitted inside. Come back down by two and spend the afternoon in a hot-stone bath at a farmhouse — the hotel arranges it for around Nu 1,500 a person, the stones heated in a fire outside and rolled into a wooden tub. It is the correct reward for the morning.

Kyichu Lhakhang first, one of the two oldest temples in Bhutan, said to have been built in the seventh century to pin down a demon. The main temple is still active, the butter lamps are lit daily, and the lemon tree in the courtyard is unusual enough to ask the monk about. Then north up the valley to Drukgyel Dzong, a ruined fortress where on a clear morning Jomolhari — 7,314 metres — fills the head of the valley exactly.

After lunch, find a village archery match. Archery is the national sport and a match happens almost every weekend near Paro town; the guide knows where. The arrows are carbon-fibre and travel 145 metres to a target the width of a dinner plate, and the celebrations after each hit are louder than anything else you will have heard in Bhutan. Final evening: shop for yathra weave, incense and saffron on the main street, and pack the red rice you meant to buy since day four.

An early start — on the road by six — for the long descent through the Wang Chhu gorge, back over the border at Phuentsholing with exit stamps, and the four-hour run to Bagdogra. Book departures after 6 pm; if your flight is morning, tell us when you book and we add a night in the Siliguri tea-garden belt at no planning charge.

That is all the admin. The border crossing is calmer than any Indian state checkpoint, the roads are paved, and the guide handles every permit from Thimphu zone to Paro district. You carry your bag and your appetite for red rice.