2025 Trans Bhutan Trail: The Trail That Connects Us

Doing hard things is inherent to endurance sports. As we become more capable in our chosen discipline, it feels natural for some of us to do things faster, farther, and more difficult. We climb onto the precipice of our previous capabilities and take a step beyond for the very purpose of not knowing how we will land.

Then, rarely, maybe once or twice in a lifetime relationship with sport, we begin something hard, somehow already knowing that we will do it. There may not be a rational explanation for this knowledge, but we possess it anyway.

From November 7 to 15, 2025, Bhutanese mountain athlete and guide Rinzin Dorji, professional runner and coach Anna Frost, and I ran and hiked the Trans Bhutan Trail. The trail spans much of the Asian nation of Bhutan in an east-west orientation, is approximately 265 miles long, and features about 74,000 feet of ascent and 79,500 feet of descent when traveling from west to east. As a supported team, we covered the trail in 8 days, 11 hours, and 54 minutes, which we believe to be the fastest known time for the route.

The Trans Bhutan Trail was used for hundreds of years to move people, food, and livestock between cities, towns, villages, and agricultural areas, before falling into disrepair about 50 years ago when the country’s main road was developed. The government rehabilitated the trail during the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened it to the public in 2022, hoping it would become a trail that locals and tourists could use to connect and reconnect — with neighboring villages, with history, with the wilds, and with each other. Parts of the trail are now used regularly, but good chunks of it remain rarely traveled. I’d estimate that a couple of dozen people travel the entire trail each year.

Before starting this adventure, we knew it would be physically and mentally challenging. And we knew we’d need the gods of logistics and health on our sides. Despite the endless unknowns, I still felt a calm surety that we’d be successful long before we started.

Bhutan is a Buddhist nation, and while I’m not Buddhist myself, I feel energetically and philosophically aligned with people who are. Although the concepts of fate and predeterminism are not Buddhist thoughts, practitioners believe that who they are and what they have done in the past are strong guiding forces for the future.

Endurance sports also edify this notion. Devoting years to your craft does not inform how well your big goal goes — every lifetime runner has an experience of inexplicably flailing in an important event, even after the best of preparations. But consistent running makes us better runners through time.

Rinzin has been a trekking, hiking, and trail running guide in Bhutan for over 20 years. Anna is a professional runner and coach with a 14-year history of trail running in Bhutan. Rinzin and Anna, in fact, were among the earliest adopters of running Bhutan’s trails and have done numerous trail running trips together before. I have also traveled to Bhutan for trail running twice in the past— running the 2022 Snowman Race and volunteering at the same event in 2024 — and have completed lots of big adventures elsewhere in the world. Perhaps, then, what we had collectively done before gave me a quiet understanding that we’d manage whatever we encountered this time.

Day 1: Running on Elation

It’s a bit before noon when we find the westernmost Trans Bhutan Trail marker in the town of Haa, where we will begin our effort.

This moment is both random and surreal. I’ve been looking at this spot on the map for a long time, so arriving here feels a little like bringing a fairytale to life. The marker is located on a random side street at the edge of this small town — no ornate building, no interpretive signs, no confirmation that this is indeed the trail’s western terminus.

This week, we’ll work as a team of four: three runners and Tenzin Wangdi, who will shadow us by car to shuttle our duffel bags, which contain spare shoes, clothes, food, and medicine, between each of our lodging facilities, and help us with any logistics that come up along the way.

While our group has only been together a few hours — Anna and I flew into the country this morning — I already feel the team’s warmth. As Rinzin, Anna, and I start our watches and set off uphill, we say goodbye to Tenzin, who we will meet up with at tonight’s lodging. He cheers us heartily and watches us go.

After 1.5 miles or so of hiking up a dirt road out of Haa proper and through a small village, we turn onto singletrack and begin a steady climb to today’s high point. We pass by our first chorten, or Buddhist monument, walking around it in a clockwise direction, as spiritual tradition asks of its practitioners.

Soon, we reach our first pass, Kaley La, on a ridgeline dividing the valleys containing the towns of Haa to the west and Paro to the east. Before the country’s main road was built, this trail was what connected the two towns. The inhabitants of Haa and Paro would meet here at Kaley La to trade — namely, meat from Haa and rice from Paro — and throw a multi-day party. While the pass today is empty and quiet, envisioning wilder times here is easy.

We break into a trot on the descent toward Paro’s outskirts. From behind, I watch Rinzin and Anna descend playfully, jumping off rocks, gawking at the views, and catching up after years of not seeing each other. The heaviness of the endless planning that precedes a trip this big lifts as today’s miles tick by, giving way to the pure joy of being on the trail.

It takes us a couple of hours to make our way through the city’s various suburbs, traveling among villages, rice paddies, and hills during the golden hour before sunset. We arrive at our lodging a couple of minutes past headlamp thirty, all of us too stubborn to stop for our lights. Day 1 is done, and we are elated.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 18.3 miles, 5,023 feet ascent, 6,119 feet descent, 6:11 elapsed
• Section traveled: Haa to Shari
• Lodging: Zhey Dhey Homestay
• Strava file

Day 2: Friendship is the Fuel

Before sunrise, we spill out of our lodging and begin the climb to today’s first high point, ascending into the morning mist. It’s chilly and humid, and condensation forms on everything: our sunglasses, running packs, shirts, shoes, and faces. Despite becoming sopping wet in this cloud, we remain warm, heating ourselves from the inside out as we powerhike uphill.

Around midday, we reach the high point of the Trans Bhutan Trail, a mountain called Pumo La, at an altitude of 13,130 feet. To our east, the valley containing Bhutan’s largest city, Thimphu, comes into view.

Despite downtown being over a vertical mile below us, the sounds of chanting in the city float to us among the wind gusts. The 2025 Global Peace Prayer Festival is currently taking place in Thimphu, and internationally renowned Buddhist leaders, along with thousands of Bhutanese pilgrims, have gathered for over a week to pray for international peace. Descending toward the city, the sounds of their efforts intensify.

Bhutanese runner and friend Vivi Tshering, along with her son Doogey, await us in the forest next to the Buddha Dordenma, one of the largest sitting Buddha statues in the world, at 177 feet in height. It is an icon of Bhutanese Buddhism, perched some 1,500 feet above Thimphu, and a national landmark. While you can normally visit the statue, there’s an hours-long wait to get in today, courtesy of the prayer festival. We don’t have hours of extra time, so we are relegated to enjoying the scene from the outside. Even in the forest a few hundred feet away, we are surrounded by the event’s prayerful energy, chanting emanating through the trees.

Vivi, whom I have known since my first visit to Bhutan, has set up a picnic for us of coffee, tea, sodas, juice, sandwiches, pizza, brownies, and more. After about 20 miles already done today, we happily sit down to gorge ourselves on this late-afternoon feast. Then, for the final 12 or so miles, Doogey, a talented runner himself, joins us. Between Vivi’s picnic and Doogey’s fresh legs, we are totally reenergized.

We weave among the thousands of people outside the Buddha Dordenma grounds waiting for their turn to get in or to pray en masse with others. Everyone is dressed in their best, and we look out of place in our running clothes. Though it’s remarkable to see so many people praying for peace, I’m relieved when we find the singletrack again and can slink out of sight.

We make the final drop down into the city, and then spend the next several miles jogging the roads through Thimphu. It’s rush hour, with people coming and going by car and foot from school, work, the store, or the festival. The streets are electric with energy, and the pavement stretch is quickly done and dusted.

We join the singletrack next to the Ola Rong Chu, one of the rivers that flows into the city of Thimphu, which we’ll follow all the way to the next pass, Dochu La. We decide to do half of this climb tonight, to where the trail intersects the main road in a village called Yusipang. Partway up the singletrack, the dark of night swallows up the trail, and we don headlamps. Powerhiking and chatting our way uphill, we reach our endpoint quickly.

The lone lodging facility in this village is full, so Tenzin drives us about 15 minutes back downhill to a hotel in a Thimphu suburb and drops Doogey at his house, too. We’ll return to the same spot tomorrow morning to resume. We end the day feeling grateful for Vivi and Doogey’s care and camaraderie, showing us that friendship is the ultimate fuel.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 32.1 miles, 10,135 feet ascent, 9,295 feet descent, 12:01 elapsed
• Section traveled: Shari to Yusipang
• Lodging: Cholay Khangzang hotel
• Strava file

Day 3: In the Darkness We Flow

It’s already been a big day, but it’s not over yet.

We forged uphill from Yusipang early this morning. We jogged over the famous pass called Dochu La, ran a long way to and through the town of Punakha, surmounted another high point, and it’s now early evening as we descend to the village of Lingmukha. We have one more moderate climb and descent before the day’s done.

Dogs are everywhere in Bhutan, and in the countryside, many are trained as guardians protecting people and crops from wild animals. As such, some are wary of or aggressive toward us, not knowing our intentions. But while they bark fiercely, most keep plenty of distance.

Among all the dogs this week, we meet a friendly few. Some approach for head pats and belly scratches. Some sit with us when we stop at snack shops, hoping for scraps. And still others join us for a mile, mountain pass, and occasionally even more. Rinzin tells us these mountain dogs are nomadic by preference, striking out for days, weeks, or forever on trails that take them to the next valley, village, or even region. And it’s a part of Bhutanese culture to care for any dogs that are around with food, water, and a dry place to sleep in bad weather. A sweet dog follows us out of Lingmukha.

Nighttime comes early in the jungle, where dense vegetation blocks a sky view, and soon we are traveling by headlamp. This ascent is steep, muddy, and rooty, but Rinzin begins to chant, and we find our rhythm in step with it. He chants several times a day, and tonight he’s praying to Guru Rinpoche, one of Bhutanese Buddhism’s most important figures, for our group’s safe passage.

A quick snack stop at the pass, and we begin our final descent to today’s finishing spot. Rinzin sets a trotting pace at the front while continuing to chant, Anna and I play chase, and the Lingmukha dog brings up the rear. We work together to navigate, as darkness, the jungle’s vegetation, and eventually farm fields obscure the trail’s markings and tread in places. The dog definitely knows the way, taking point from time to time to show us the route. We are a cohesive unit, flowing down the trail.

Though it’s been a long day, I’m sad when our toes touch the pavement and our evening on the trail ends. We offer the dog snacks to refuel him from his mountain adventure, and he falls into step with the other dogs surrounding us, who’ve appeared to see what the nighttime fuss is all about. When we hit the trail again the next morning, the doggo is long gone, having moved onto his next adventure well before we begin ours.

We runners chase that elusive feeling of flow, where running feels physically easy and the mind floats equally unimpeded. We go to great lengths to try to create it on a perfect trail, under the warm sunshine on a fresh morning, in a striving race effort, or by working hard with a committed group of friends. The truth is, flow state cannot be fully manufactured and sometimes happens when we least expect it. And tonight, in the pitch black Bhutanese jungle, with a man chanting Buddhist prayers and an adventurous dog, the gift of flow somehow found us.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 34.8 miles, 7,835 feet ascent, 11,776 feet descent, 12:58 elapsed
• Section traveled: Yusipang to Wangdi Phodrang
• Lodging: Kichu Resort
• Strava file

Day 4: A Moment of Mortality

A few hours into today, atop a mountain, and several paces ahead of me, Rinzin disappears into the jungle next to the trail. By the time I pull even with him, he’s chopped down a small sapling and is dragging it onto the trail. With the machete he’s carrying every step of the way, he quickly fashions a spear about five feet tall, peeling the bark with ease and slicing in a sharp point.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since last night,” he quips. “We’ve crossed into eastern Bhutan, where it’s more wild with the animals,” he continues as he folds up his second trekking pole and stows it in his backpack. For the rest of this trek, he’ll carry a regular hiking pole in one hand and this stick in the other. “It’s much stronger than the trekking pole, if I need it for the animals.”

I admit that, until this moment, I’ve been naively wandering through the jungle, giving wild animals little thought. Sure, I’d done my research about which critters could harm us, as one should do when heading out in a new-to-us location. And we’d talked as a group about what to do if we encounter any of those animals — namely, yell and act aggressively at tigers, leopards, and bears, and bang the ground in front of us with our hiking pole in tall grasses for the snakes. But other than that, I hadn’t worried much.

In ultrarunning and long-distance adventuring, it can be easy to start feeling immortal. “We’ve covered 100 miles in three days, and I’m not tired. The last hill did not feel hard, so this one won’t either. Nothing ate us in the jungle yesterday, so we’ll be safe today.”

But the reality is, we are just little humans meandering through a lot of jungle, and there are forces and creatures here with the capacity to kill or maim us. Rinzin’s spear is the reality check that I probably needed to take this jungle just a little more seriously.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 27.4 miles, 9,603 feet ascent, 5,458 feet descent, 11:06 elapsed
• Section traveled: Wangdi Phodrang to Rukubji
• Lodging: Sangay’s farm stay
• Strava file

Day 5: The Day It All Goes Wrong

Anna’s been ill with a gastrointestinal bug since yesterday afternoon. At last night’s lodging, she went straight to bed and could only sip water and electrolytes. She breakfasted tentatively this morning, able to get in a bit of food. Although she’s moving well today, she’s still sickly.

We encounter our first royal Bengal tiger tracks — Bhutan’s apex predator. A local on the trail tells us they are a day old and made by a male tiger. Pardon my language, but the tracks are fecking huge and somewhat terrifying.

Yesterday, two friendly dogs spilled out of the jungle, way on top of a mountain and far from any village. Adventure dogs through and through, they followed us all day yesterday and into the night, slept outside our lodging, and started today with us. These dogs have been a sweet addition to our team. But now they are showing themselves to be too physically affected to continue, but too psychologically dedicated to give up. They are surely accustomed to being on their feet all day, but probably not used to traveling 30-odd miles every day. We force our separation in a small village, leaving them with a person who distracts them with food long enough for us to get a couple of miles out of town. It’s a sad, but necessary, goodbye.

The trail in this section, between the villages of Chendebji in the west and Tshangkha in the east, is totally overgrown. We spend several hours bushwhacking a few miles before giving up. We retreat to jogging and hiking on the main road, located above where the trail is supposed to be, until the trail becomes passable again.

Nighttime comes as we descend toward the town of Trongsa, and we stumble across a Himalayan black bear on the trail, another of Bhutan’s main predators. Anna sees it in the beam of her headlamp first and yells, and the bear returns her greeting with a low growl. We all yell and hurl rocks, Rinzin wields his stick, and the bear runs into the forest. While it’s the perfect outcome of the encounter, our feathers are duly ruffled.

Now, I have been feeling off since late afternoon today, and in the overnight hours, my stomach turns, as Anna’s did the day before.

At the end of today, our spirits are a bit smashed, feeling like more has gone wrong than right.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 25.1 miles, 3,750 feet ascent, 5,767 feet descent, 10:38 elapsed
• Section traveled: Rukubji to Trongsa Dzong View Point
• Lodging: Norbu Lingkha Resort
• Strava file

Day 6: In Western Medicine We Trust

We’ve tried hard to keep our hands, food, and water clean, but something has still worked its way inside both Anna and me. Rinzin is fine, as his stomach is well-adapted to the conditions.

After hemming and hawing about the best course of action early this morning, we decide to go all in on various forms of Western medicine, despite the fact that we don’t know exactly what’s wrong and thus what precisely will help. We take a bunch of medicine, pack more in our running packs, and hit the trail.

The morning begins rough. I am still on the downward slope of illness onset and feeling awful. It takes us a long time to put away the miles and vertical gain to the top of the first pass, Yutang La, where the main road and trail intersect.

At the summit’s shop, we stop in for warm drinks and snacks. We are both relieved that our stomachs are tolerating calories, but we are careful with volume, so as not to overwork systems in distress. It’s a glimmer of hope that all is not totally lost today.

As the day progresses, our physical well-being improves, and our moods follow suit. We travel through a wide, open agricultural valley containing a few villages, and onto the mountain range separating us from today’s finish point in the town of Jakar, in the Bumthang valley. This mountain range is home to a large monastery, called Tharpaling, and we catch glimpses of it here and there through the thick stands of pine trees. We pass within perhaps a third of a mile and are able to hear the monks chanting. Our spirits continue to ascend as we also do.

From the top of the mountain, it’s a big drop to Jakar in the late afternoon. With our bodies working better and our minds having followed in optimistic suit, we joyfully jog the flat couple of miles across Jakar and through an icy evening wind to our lodging for the night, eat heartily for dinner, and climb into bed. We are so relieved to end the day in much better condition than when we started.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 26.7 miles, 8,448 feet ascent, 6,995 feet descent, 11:04 elapsed
• Section traveled: Trongsa Dzong View Point to Jakar
• Lodging: Gongkhar Hotel
• Strava file

Day 7: Highest Highs and Lowest Lows

We powerhike our way out of Jakar and the Bumthang Valley, reaching our first high point before dawn breaks. We drop down into the next valley, Tang Valley, jog past the Pema Choling nunnery to the sounds of the nuns’ morning prayers, and cross over the Buddhist holy site Mebartsho, or the Burning Lake, all before 8:30 a.m.

The seamless team we’d been for the first four days is back together again. This is good, because we have the aggressive goal of traveling something like 35 miles to the village of Sengor today, to catch up on miles lost to bushwhacking and illness the last couple of days.

Up and down, ridge and valley, the day progresses, but the pressure stays on because today’s tallest passes are the last two. In the afternoon, we travel through the village of Ura, hoping for a snack shop, but nothing is open near the trail. Instead, we picnic at the edge of town before tackling the day’s second-to-last climb.

At the 12,600-foot pass, it’s the highest we’ve been in a few days, and a bit of snow and ice remain from the most recent fall storm. The wind at the summit is frigid, and we don more layers and cruise down the other side. Rinzin sings loudly as we descend, his voice echoing through the forest and lulling us along.

One more pass to go, Thrumshing La, where the road and trail cross again today, and then a descent to the village of Sengor, maybe just eight miles left. About 45 minutes before dark on the ascent toward Thrumshing La, we encounter a series of tiger tracks, bigger and fresher than those on Day 5. Rinzin exclaims that it’s rare for a tiger to be all the way up here at about 11,000 feet in altitude and expresses discomfort with us continuing too far in the dark. However, it’ll take a couple of hours to get to our planned endpoint.

After some discussion, we agree to stop at Thrumshing La instead of continuing to Sengor, and have Tenzin drive us to and from our lodging so that we can restart again at first light. We also agree to walk on the trail till dark and then on the road after that until Tenzin reaches us — he now has to drive an hour all the way back up the pass. Our reasoning is that the road makes a wider cut through the jungle, providing a bigger safety buffer from wildlife.

Until it’s time to don the headlamps, we powerhike up the trail in a tightly bunched group, yelling and chanting. Then, we move over to the road for the final couple of kilometers. Rinzin hits his stick on a big bottle he’s found on the side of the road and chants, while Anna and I panic-shout things like, “Hey … tiger?!” While I think it’s likely that we scared any wildlife way off at this point, it’s the most scared I’ve been in the wilds in a long time.

I also have another growing problem. For a couple of hours, my stomach has been threatening to expel itself again. By the time we reach today’s endpoint, it has turned entirely. For the rest of the night, I am really ill, unable to eat or drink more than water and electrolytes. For such highs earlier today, tonight is a real low.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 31.2 miles, 10,446 feet ascent, 6,732 feet descent, 13:07 elapsed
• Section traveled: Jakar to Thrumshing La
• Lodging: Tashi Gatshel Food and Lodge
• Strava file

Day 8: Fortunate Geography

Today, we start at Thrumshing La, where we believe the trail will lead us through jungle to the village of Sengor. We’re unsure of what’s after that, though. We’ve seen on the internet that someone had walked the road for several miles after Sengor, but the proprietors of last night’s lodging believe there is actually more jungle trail from Sengor eastward. Like for much of the trail thus far, we’re not sure what we’ll find.

Interestingly, we don’t have a detailed map of the entire Trans Bhutan Trail or a complete, accurate GPX track. Though the trail was opened in 2022, these resources are not yet publicly available in Bhutan. That said, prior to this trip, Rinzin had guided on over half of the trail, and I did lots of internet research to piece together a possible line across the map from trailhead to trailhead. We also knew the trail was marked with white blazes regularly and signposts at some of the road crossings and towns.

In many places, the trail has been easy to follow, like in the long stretches of wild areas. Markings in farms and villages are mixed, where sometimes it’s easy to find our way through the fields and homes, and other times we improvise when we find none. Most of the time on the trails and roads through the bigger towns and cities, there have been no markings, and total on-the-ground navigation is needed.

This morning, my stomach is quiet because there’s nothing left in it, but I am weak and noticeably lagging behind Rinzin and Anna. The group has 70 miles to cover in two days, and we very simply can’t slow down by much. I let myself start to consider whether I should stop in Sengor or on the road after, if we end up there, to prevent my illness from jeopardizing the whole group’s success.

But the geography decides for me. The trail descends deep into a jungle gorge below Sengor, well away from the road. Stopping would now mean significant backtracking and complicating the team’s logistics, which need to be focused on forward progress.

In the next section, we cover about 20 miles, dropping on the order of 10,000 feet. Courtesy of gravity as an aid and not feeding myself, I’m rewarded with the ability to jog and a calm stomach. By the time we pop out of this isolated section of trail to some easy road miles between a few villages and the day’s final climb, I’m feeling much better again.

We motor efficiently on the road section and on the big climb to the village of Mongar, where we stop for the night. Tomorrow will be a big day to finish the trail, but some fortunate geography has ensured we’ll do it together.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 31 miles, 6,004 feet ascent, 13,032 feet descent, 13:45 elapsed
• Section traveled: Thrumshing La to Mongar
• Lodging: Wangchuck Hotel
• Strava file

Day 9: Together in Trashigang

We depart from our hotel in Mongar way before dawn. Our destination is the city of Trashigang, the major town in eastern Bhutan containing the eastern endpoint of the Trans Bhutan Trail. We bid farewell to Tenzin for the day, “See you in 18 or 19 hours!” As he’s done every day for the last eight days, he checks his watch to mark our departure time, gives us a huge smile, and tells us to have a good day.

We jog for over an hour on an easy dirt road, and pre-dawn has crept into the sky as we start our first big climb to Kori La. It is before mid-morning when we reach this high point, the final place where the trail and the main road meet. The small shop at the summit is just opening up, but they still serve us hot drinks, and we buy snacks to munch on while we drink and to fortify our supplies for today’s trail.

What morale I’d built on moving well early this morning melts away as I lose my stomach again. While my stomach appears to be getting progressively better, I am learning that it can’t process much volume, and I get ill quickly if I ask it to process more food and drink than it can handle. I decide to stop taking in calories and focus on enough water and electrolytes. The miles pass slowly, and it’s late morning when we cross a tiny paved road in a valley at the start of a huge climb. Rinzin dawdles a little strangely here, while Anna and I want to motor on, knowing what is ahead. Soon, he can’t hide his secret any longer, telling us, “Tenzin is driving to this spot with a surprise lunch.”

Rinzin barely gets the explanation out before Tenzin rounds the corner with a lunch of momos, chips, and cold drinks. Because driving to these remote areas often takes longer than running, support stops haven’t been feasible. Tenzin’s gone to great lengths to bring us lunch on our longest day. We cheer and sit down in the shade. Rinzin and Anna feast while I rest my protesting stomach. Whether I can enjoy it or not, Tenzin’s team effort is touching.

Soon, we start a long climb to the village of Drametse, perched on a ridgetop at 7,000 feet in altitude. With maybe 1,500 feet of climbing to go, we stop in a shop, again for drinks and snacks. It has to be mid-afternoon by the time we reach here, and Rinzin translates that the shopkeepers think we’re crazy to go all the way to Trashigang tonight. We do not disagree, but we continue on.

Drametse comes and goes, and so do several more countryside villages. In between these villages are rural homes and farms, and it’s a privilege to watch this area turn in for the night. The sky passes through a palette of pastels before finally yielding to blue and black. Points of light dot the landscape all around us as the homesteads light up. The sound of night in Bhutan begins, the now-familiar cacophony of dogs barking.

I am relieved that my stomach has settled, and I am able to enjoy the experience again. On the last climb, Rinzin chants the traditional Buddhist prayer, “Om mani padme hum. Om mani padme hum.” While I fall into rhythmic step behind him, Anna gets so sleepy that she has to turn K-pop on her phone and do sprint intervals behind us to stay awake. The scene is simply hilarious.

At the top is Gongthong, our final ridgetop village, and we arrive somewhere around 10 p.m. It’s Saturday night, and a shop is still open, so we stop in for water after having found the trail to be dry for the last few hours. We drop into the final descent, three miles and around 3,000 feet, to Dangme Chu, the river before Trashigang. As we cross the bridge at the bottom, we cheer quietly while looking up at the final 1,200-foot climb to the finish.

We laugh and chat while climbing, reliving our week. We pass our last mani dangrim, or Buddhist prayer wall, as well as a hulking chorten, lapsing into thoughtful quiet as we walk clockwise around them, now a familiar and comfortable movement.

While a trail is a physical connector, it is the act of traveling it together that has been the conduit for so much more. We’ve met locals who are just as curious about us as we are about them, and mountain dogs who seem to like adventures as much as we do. We’ve been scratched by the jungle, sunburned by the sun, and covered in the trail’s mud and livestock shit. We’ve shared Buddhist chants and Korean pop music. We watched thousands pray for peace in spite of unspeakable acts of violence taking place at the same time elsewhere in the world. Despite individual weakness, we witness group strength. In an era where some try to divide us, we are united.

On the last switchback, a light appears from above. For only a split second, we wonder who else might be on this trail at night, before knowing it can only be Tenzin, having hiked out the final half mile to join us. He and I have bonded over timekeeping this week, and after checking his watch, he notes that we’re right on schedule.

The trail funnels the four of us into Trashigang Dzong, the administrative center for this region, which is all quiet at this late hour. In total Bhutanese fashion, there’s no clear endpoint for the trail, so we decide to make the ornate archway marking the entrance to the dzong’s grounds our finish. We pass under it and exchange a series of sweaty, emotive high-fives and hugs. In 8 days, 11 hours, and 54 minutes, we’ve covered the Trans Bhutan Trail’s 265 miles. We are trashed but together in Trashigang.

Daily Details

• Statistics: 38.1 miles, 12,661 feet ascent, 14,402 feet descent, 18:26 elapsed
• Section traveled: Mongar to Trashigang
• Lodging: Lingkhar Lodge
• Strava file

Thank You

We’re grateful to the sponsors who enabled this adventure:

• Suunto
• Näak

Thanks also to the following brands for their additional support:

• Rab
• Hypoxico
• Feetures
• Zeal Sunglasses
• Nitecore
• Kahtoola
• Gorewear

And thank you so much to Blue Poppy Tours for organizing our logistics in Bhutan.