TRAVELLING THROUGH BHUTAN - DZONGDRAKHA, PARO

Last weekend I was in Paro visiting my in-laws (I do that often) but what I hardly did was explore Paro. Last Sunday was a full moon on lunar calendar so we decided to explore lhakhangs we never visited before. My in-laws suggested a place so we took tea and snacks and went there. 
The first place that we visited was called Dzongdrakha, its direct translation would mean dzong on mountain. The moment I saw it, it reminded me of Paro Taktshang, it was smaller and also easily accessible. it was right next to the road. It is on the way to Chelele la and took us around 20-25 minutes to reach the farm road heading towards the lhakhang. it was originally village owned lhakhang but later was handed over to the monastic body. 

There were four temples one of which was guru lhakhang which is facing Drakarpo (white mountain) which is another important religious spot in Paro. The caretaker there told was that it is believed that guru came from Drakarpo in one leap, so its believed that one footprint is in Drakarpo while the other footprint is in Dzongdrakha. 
it was an auspicious day so the locals were having annual rituals and all the visitors were offered with a hearty vegetarian lunch. 

From there we went to another goenmpa called Gorina. Not many people visits this goenpa. we had to take the farm road which wasn't so good...and it took us around 2 hours  (but felt like forever) to reach there, it was a really slow driving because of the road. the place was quite deserted, not many settlement. there were few monks who were students there. We were told that Gorina goenmpa was a residence of  25th Je Khenpo Sherab Gyeltshen and currently its a monastic school which has classes till 8th standard with only 12 students. the place had a really soothing effect on me, away from all the people and settlement and urbanization. Sometimes all it takes to re-energize one self is to spend a day or two in such places. I am more than glad (although the road sucked) that I visited both the places. It took us another one hour or so to reach Paro town.