Phari

Phari stands high at the head of the Chumbi Valley, beneath the mountain routes linking Tibet with Bhutan and Sikkim. Its dzong guarded a settlement on the road toward Gyantse and Lhasa, while the route over Tremo La connected it with Paro. The cold heights limited cultivation, and travellers relied on animals and provisions brought across the passes.

Tibetan accounts associate Phari’s early fortress and markets with the Sakya governor Phakpa Balzang in the fourteenth century. Later the town remained a staging place on the road between Bhutan and central Tibet. Envoys George Bogle and Samuel Turner crossed the Bhutanese pass on their journeys to Tibet in the eighteenth century, and Thomas Manning passed through Phari in 1811. Merchants and travellers shared the difficult road between the high plateau and the valleys to the south.