Paro lies on a broad, flat valley floor at roughly twenty-two hundred metres in western Bhutan, which makes it the most civilised-looking place in a country of narrow gorges and steep forests. The Paro Chhu river runs through a patchwork of rice fields, and farmhouses with painted windows and carved wooden eaves sit among apple orchards, with pine-covered mountains on either side. The country's only international airport is here, and the approach, threading between peaks with the pilot flying by sight, is considered one of the trickiest in the world.
Paro is also where Bhutan's spiritual landmarks cluster. High on a cliff about nine hundred metres above the valley floor, Paro Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest monastery, clings to a rock face as though glued, and the story is that Guru Rinpoche flew there on the back of a tigress in the eighth century to meditate in a cave. The hike takes a few hours each way and is steep. Down in the valley, Rinpung Dzong, a massive whitewashed fortress-monastery with a covered wooden bridge in front, was built in the seventeenth century and still houses monks and the district administration. In spring it hosts a famous festival with masked dances.
Visitors normally travel on an organised tour with a licensed guide, and foreign-plated vehicles and rider arrangements are tightly controlled, so check the current rules with an operator long before you plan anything. If you can arrange it, the East-West Highway, known as the Lateral Road, starts from here and runs over high passes with prayer flags, through cloud forest and past monasteries, on a road that is narrow, steep and subject to landslides in the monsoon, from June to September.
Paro has fuel and basic services, though the town has fewer than three thousand people, and Thimphu, the capital, about an hour's drive to the east, has more of everything.
Try the national dish, ema datshi, chillies in cheese sauce, with red rice, and be prepared for it to be hot. Arrive with acclimatised lungs, because the altitude shows when you climb stairs.