Bhutan has a variety of places to stay from simple home stays and basic hotels through to mid-range chains right up to luxury brands like COMO, Six Senses, Aman and newly opened &Beyond property by the riverside in Punakha.
There are also more hotels being built; a 100 room Hilton hotel is coming to Paro soon. Most hotels especially at the higher end will organize all your visas, Sustainable Development Fee and provide you with a tour guide and transport for your sightseeing too.
There seemed to be a pretty similar road map of what people experience in terms of sites. Click What to See in Bhutan for an overview.
But good hotels should be able to arrange everything and even customise things for you and that’s very helpful.
We chose to stay at the very reputable, Singapore owned COMO branded hotels for our Bhutan trip and were delighted with our hotel partner choice.
We stayed at both the COMO Uma Paro in Paro the capital and Uma Punakha in warm and sunny, sub tropical Punhakha. That’s about a 3 hour drive away from Paro.
The Uma Paro hotel is just 10 minutes away from the airport but you don’t hear any noise at all.
The grounds of Uma Paro are extensive, verdant and beautiful. They have a lovely guided walk you can do on the grounds where you can see the different types of villas and accommodation they have. There is also archery – the national sport in Bhutan – on the grounds as well as a form of giant darts!
We used the indoor swimming pool a few times which opens up to the beautiful countryside. The building itself used to be a fortress or dzong!
Chilly evenings are for the cozy bar areas with the special Bukhari fireplaces or the characterful courtyard area with a real fire and sometimes local musicians playing.
The Uma Punhaka hotel is really special and about a 3 hour drive from Paro. In fact it was even mentioned in the Top 50 list Conde Nast 2024.
The location is serene and the floor to ceiling windows provide picture postcard views of the valley and Mo Chhu river below. Waking up to this view is something I won’t forget! The small building you see is part of their award winning spa!
We also loved having breakfasts on the warm patios early in the morning and all the food is very good. The spa here is an award winning facility and rightly so. Do try a treatment after a hike one day.
Our COMO guides for our entire trip
We must have had the best guides in Bhutan! There was no question about Bhutan they couldn’t answer, they went over and above in terms of how well they looked after us too. If we wanted to veer off the itinerary that was no problem and they even understood what would work for us in terms of driving, walking and food habits very quickly.
They were superb on and very supportive on our Tigers Nest hike and we both felt very re assured with them literally at our side. So thank you very much to Tshering and Namge! See you again soon!
It would have been lovely if both the COMO hotels had organised little guest get togethers in the early evening over a drink and fireside or patio chat. That would have been very welcome to go over the day’s activities! But the over riding impression we left with was one of very high service levels and genuine care for their guests.
Click here to learn more about The Food In Bhutan.
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