Punakha, Bhutan

Pemako Punakha

Price per night from$1,403.98

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD1,403.98), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Pemako Punakha Photos

Style

Mindful mountain hideaway

Setting

Blessed Punakha beyul

Explore

More hotels in Punakha More hotels in Bhutan

Pemako Punakha offers the full-on fire of Bhutan’s ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon’ nickname, A welcome with a waterfall and chanting lama (local monk), and decor rife with symbolism by design legend Bill Bensley are your warm-up to authentic meals in dzong-style pavilions, plus adventures with bows and arrows and the myths of the Punakha Valley. There’s spirit aplenty and substantial luxury, too (hello butlers and private pools), so your own Gross National Happiness index will skyrocket. 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A welcome cocktail and 15 per cent off in the spa and bar; GoldSmiths also get a free minibar. Stays of three nights or more get a 60-minute massage for each guest

Facilities

Photos Pemako Punakha facilities

Need to know

Rooms

19 luxury tented villas, each with a private pool.

Check–Out

11am; earliest check-in, 2pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.

More details

Rates include breakfast, a one-time minibar raid and one in-house experience.

Also

The hotel can only be reached by a narrow wooden bridge, and the terrain on-site can be uneven in places, with slender walkways and paths, so unfortunately this retreat isn’t suitable if you have reduced mobility.

At the hotel

Yoga studio, gym, boutique, charged laundry service and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: personal butler, 55-inch smart TV, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, minibar, free bottled water and Inara bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Designer Bill Bensley — who’s dressed many a legendary retreat, including La Mamounia and Capella and Shinta Mani’s stays — is adroit at gathering the threads of a hotel’s story and tying them together in luxe interiors. Here, in the Luxury Tented Pool Villas, he homages the Bhutanese vernacular in dramatic, dark carved wood, folkloric artwork and artefacts, and accents of kasaya orange. But unlike the local lamas, he doesn’t eschew material comforts, putting two queen-size beds together to make a ginormous one, heating bathroom floors and adding a freestanding copper bath tub by a view-blessed window.

Poolside

There are plenty of spaces in the hotel for fostering community, but there’s no need to share when it comes to swimming spots: each tented villa has its own pool (with adjustable temperature), made more sanctum-like by the nearby river’s ASMR, inner-peace-inspiring valley views and lots of bubbles from built-in jets.

Spa

Bhutan’s people have been steaming in native herbs and soaking cares away since single-digit centuries — and the ancient arts of Sowa-Rigpa live on in the Lotus Realm Spa, a warren of ornamented hillside cabins and bridges. A resident doctor of traditional medicine and herbalist can be consulted and will mix healing remedies for your hot-stone bath, the signature treatment here. There are infrared saunas and steam rooms divided by sex; suites dedicated to foot massages; a yoga studio worthy of salutations, and a gym where the scenery will get your heart rate up, too.

Packing tips

Bring clothes for clambering around on peaks (and modest wear for temple visits).

Also

You get off to an adventurous start here: the only access point to the hotel is across a wooden ‘disconnecting bridge’ (so called because you need to disconnect to reconnect), which isn’t for the very faint of heart.

Children

Little Smiths can stay here, and will undoubtedly get a thrilling cultural education, but there are few facilities available for young ones, making this better suited to tweens and teens.

Food and Drink

Photos Pemako Punakha food and drink

Top Table

It’s hard to improve on that view, but Soma upgrades it with groups of cushioned banquettes and day-beds with inlaid mini cocktail tables in its alfresco area.

Dress Code

Take inspiration from the dense detailing and riotous colour of Bhutan’s traditional gho tunics and kira dresses.

Hotel restaurant

There are four dining spaces at Pemako Punakha, each uniquely special. You enter Soma (which translates to ‘nectar’) over an ornate covered bridge; this is the all-day diner but it’s not so casual, with its burnished marbles, carved columns and ogee windows with slices of view. Here you can try regional yak stew, momo dumplings and chicken with red rice; Indian-style curries and a selection of Western dishes. Away from the lodge by the spa is Alchemy House, a restored heritage residence where chefs cook yak curries, churu jaju (a soup made with river weeds and cheese) and ema datshi (chilli and cheese) in front of you in clay pots, to be served in wooden bowls as you dine cross-legged at a communal table. Private hall Sura is where kings, sheiks and A-listers have held intimate gatherings. And staff can take you in a golf buggy several hundred metres up, along a winding mountain path by a gorge, to Ati, a wooden cabin for secluded, barbecue meals (customised to your taste) with a more mythical feel. 

Hotel bar

As impressive as the valley’s mighty dzongs — especially when twinkling with lights after dark, Five Nectars Bar is set by the river and overlooks the lower Punakha valley. On balmy nights you’ll want to take your chilli margarita, turmeric-laced gin and tonic or glass of wine (the hotel's cellar has a worldly selection) outside, but the interior, with its lofty ceilings and array of hanging vintage Bhutanese guitars, is impressive in its own right.

Last orders

Each restaurant serves breakfast from 7am to 10am, lunch between noon and 3pm, and dinner from 7pm to 10pm.

Room service

Dine on your private deck, with a dedicated room-service menu available from 7am to 9.30pm.

Location

Photos Pemako Punakha location
Address
Pemako Punakha
Punakha Valley
Punakha
Bhutan

Pemako Punakha is tucked into the undulating green curves of Bhutan’s mountainous Punakha Valley, on the banks of the Mo Chhu River.

Planes

Touchdown at Paro Airport (Bhutan's only international hub), a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Pemako Punakha. Staff can help with transfers (be sure to book in advance) from the airport or the hotel’s sister lodge in Thimphu if you’re on a multi-stop trip.

Automobiles

Bhutan doesn’t recognise international driving licences, so you’ll need to arrange transfers through the hotel or hire a car with a driver. On the way from the airport, you’ll pass capital city Thimphu and the Dochula mountain pass, where there’s the option to stop for a picnic or spot of tea at Lamperi’s Royal Botanical Park.

Other

For a zippier journey and to see those mountainous vistas from above, helicopter services run from Paro to the hotel's helipad.

Worth getting out of bed for

Bhutanese culture is as colourful as the elemental hues of the Buddhist prayer flags that flutter positive thoughts onto the wind from the hotel grounds. These mountains have myths built into the bedrock, so let the hotel staff act as your lama (spiritual guide) and plan a storied hike to, say, Jiligang Lhakhang, aka Cat’s Peak, a monastery built where a kitty flew like a bird then safely landed when thrown by Tibetan monk Ngawang Chogyel after his spiritual prowess was challenged by his cousin, the ‘Divine Madman’ Drukpa Kunley. You can see more of Kunley’s unique work at Chimi Lakhang, a temple decorated with wooden phalluses, said to ward off evil.

Pemako Punakha’s resident lama has less startling ways of enlightening you, through meditation, welcome rituals with tinkling bells, astrology readings and prayer-flag ceremonies where guests plant their own in the ground. Sure to get your spirits up, but make them really fly as you spy kingfishers and white-bellied herons rafting along the Pho Chhu River or as you master the nimble art of archery (the national game of Bhutan) at the hotel’s shooting range, or Khuru, Bhutan's version of darts. 

Local restaurants

Given the hotel’s remote setting and four dining spots, you’re unlikely to seek sustenance outside of the resort.

Reviews

Photos Pemako Punakha reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this spirit-lifting sanctuary amid Punakha’s peaks, valleys and rushing river, and unpacked their prayer flags and vividly painted wooden masks, a full account of their culture-at-a-calming-pace break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Pemako Punakha in Bhutan… 

Bhutan opened its borders to tourists in 1974, but its culture has traditions that span centuries — so, you have some catching up to do. From the beginning of your stay, Pemako Punakha delivers a crash course in native history and myths: cross its prayer-flag-dotted wooden bridge (the only access point to the hotel), pass the mighty vistas of the Punakha Valley and a man-made waterfall paying homage to a regional legend, and you’ll be welcomed at the gate by a lama (local monk) bearing bells and chanting.  

Staff will point the way to storied temples, nature-roamed wilds and other fantastical sights, but exploring the hotel’s vast estate is an adventure in itself. Up and down the valley’s peaks and besides the Mo Chhu river, each dzong-like pavilion or restored heritage building reveals authentic feasting, spa rituals using antique wisdom, and design with a luxe local accent by interiors legend Bill Bensley. 

Book now

Price per night from $1,286.98

Hotels nearby

Villas nearby

Recently viewed