The Hot Stone Bath: Bhutan’s Own Wellness Tradition

Most of what is sold as wellness in Asian hotels was imported from somewhere else. The hot stone bath of Bhutan is an exception. It is a household custom, practised in farmhouses across the country, and visitors can take it in very nearly its original form.

How it works

The bath is called dotsho, from the words for stone and bath. The water is known as menchu, medicinal water. The tub is a long box of wood, set in a shed or outdoors, and divided near one end by a slatted partition. The bather lies in the larger part. The smaller part is for the stones.

The stones are rounded boulders collected from a river bed. They are roasted in a wood fire for several hours until they are red. An attendant carries them one at a time with tongs and lowers them into the end compartment, where they crack and hiss and bring the water close to the limit of what can be borne. Bunches of fresh wormwood, an artemisia that grows wild on every hillside, are steeped in the water and give it a sharp green scent. When the bath cools, the bather knocks on the wall or calls out, and more stones are added.

What it is for

Bhutanese hold that the heated stones release minerals into the water and that the herbs draw out aches. The bath is taken for sore joints and backs, for stiffness after work in the fields, for skin complaints, and simply against the cold. Farming families traditionally bathe after the harvest and in winter, sometimes on a day chosen with the advice of an astrologer, and some take a course of baths over a week. There has been little scientific study. The effect that any visitor will notice is the one that follows a long soak in very hot water after a day’s walking: deep relaxation, and sound sleep.

Where to try it

In a farmhouse. The simplest version is the most memorable. Around Paro and in the Bumthang valleys, farming families heat a bath for guests in a lean-to beside the house, often by candlelight, and follow it with a dinner of red rice, chilli and cheese, and butter tea. Guides arrange it on request, usually for the evening after the climb to the Tiger’s Nest monastery.

In a lodge. The luxury lodges have built the bath into their spas, with a view and a massage afterwards. It is offered at the Amankora lodges and at the COMO Uma hotels in Paro and Punakha. Other lodges in the same valleys include those of the Six Senses circuit, which reaches as far as Bumthang, and andBeyond Punakha River Lodge, on the bank of the Mo Chhu.

At a hot spring. Bhutan also has natural hot springs, called tshachu, to which people travel in winter and camp for days. The best known is at Gasa, north of Punakha.

Practical advice

A session lasts an hour to an hour and a half. The water is hotter than a Japanese onsen at first, so enter slowly and ask for cold water if needed. Drink water before and after. People with heart conditions or high blood pressure, and pregnant women, should take advice first. Keep away from the stone compartment.

The bath is at its best after exertion. It suits the end of a day on the Trans Bhutan Trail, or the cold evenings of the festival season, when travellers come to attend a tshechu.