Birdwatching Paradise

Straight from the airstrip to the Paro Chhu's shingle banks, where ibisbill work the stones and white-capped redstarts flit along the current. An easy first list over dinner with your specialist birding guide.

Bird the mossy oak forest around Dochula Pass and the Lampelri botanical park: laughingthrushes, yuhinas, fire-tailed sunbirds, and — with luck — the elusive satyr tragopan.

Cross Lawa La into the glacial bowl of Phobjikha, winter home of the black-necked cranes that migrate over the Himalaya from Tibet. Evening at the crane information centre and a first scan of the marshes.

Bird the temperate forests along the Pele La road — parrotbills in the bamboo, cutias and sibias in the moss forest — before returning to Punakha's warmth for riverside listing at dusk.

One last riverside scan for ibisbill before your flight — because a birder never really stops birding.