Paro

Paro unfolds along a broad valley floor in western Bhutan, its floodplains patterned with rice fields and threaded by a glacial river beneath snow-capped peaks. The town itself is small and historic, but it is the valley setting that lingers, that particular hush found only where mountains meet cultivated land. Most journeys through Bhutan begin and end here, and it rewards a day or two of unhurried walking before heading further into the country.