108 Chortens in Bhutan: Dochula, Gelephu and a Seventh-Century King

Almost every visitor to Bhutan stops at Dochula. The pass on the road from Thimphu to Punakha sits at about 3,100 metres, and on a clear winter morning the Himalayan range lines the northern horizon. In the foreground, on a small hill at the crest, stand 108 chortens.

On 1 November 2026, Bhutan raises another 108 — along the Mau Chhu in Gelephu, in the country’s warm south, in a single day. It is the second time in a generation that the country has built its most sacred number into the landscape. And it sits in a tradition much older than either.

The first 108: a king’s temples

In the seventh century, the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo is said to have raised 108 temples across the Himalayan world. The tradition tells it as an act of pinning down a great demoness who lay across the land, subduing obstacles so that the Dharma could spread. Two of the temples in that account stand in Bhutan: Kyichu Lhakhang in Paro and Jambay Lhakhang in Bumthang, among the oldest sacred sites in the country.

Kuensel invoked the same precedent when Project 108 was announced. The Gelephu chortens, it wrote, do not set out to compete with that history, but to honour it.

The second 108: Dochula, 2004

The chortens at Dochula are the Druk Wangyal Khangzang Chortens — known locally as the chortens of victory. They were built under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck as a memorial to the Bhutanese soldiers who lost their lives in December 2003. Construction finished in mid-2004, and they were consecrated with religious rites on 19 and 20 June 2004.

Their arrangement is a gathering. The 108 stand in three tiers on a single mound — 45 at the base, 36 in the middle, 27 at the top — around a central chorten, with a path winding up between them. They are red-banded khangzang chortens, each built around a juniper sokshing, the sacred pole at the heart of every chorten. In 2008 the Druk Wangyal Lhakhang was completed beside them to mark a century of the monarchy.

The third 108: Gelephu, 2026

Project 108 takes the same number and lays it out in a completely different shape. Its chortens are Jangchub Chortens — the chorten of enlightenment, one of the eight classical forms — each about fifteen metres tall. Instead of gathering on a hill, they run in a single line along the river, 108 metres apart, for about 11.6 kilometres.

And instead of being built over months by craftsmen, they are to be raised in one day by close to 40,000 volunteers, 300 to each chorten, with the sacred relics inside prepared through the summer by monks at Sarpang Dzong.

Three acts, side by side

What the shape says

The three are the same number, and the same devotion. What differs is the geometry, and each shape suits its purpose.

Dochula gathers. Its chortens stand close together on a pass that travellers must cross, a single place of remembrance that you walk around and through. It holds a particular moment and the people lost in it.

Gelephu extends. Its chortens are strung along a river valley, at a distance you cannot take in from any one point, raised together by more people than have ever built anything in Bhutan at once. By Kuensel’s description, they are offered not for victory or glory, but for the wellbeing of all sentient beings.

A cluster on a mountain pass, and a line along a river. Bhutan’s most sacred number, twice in a generation, and each time in the shape of what it was built to hold.