Amankora, Paro

You begin your journey to the hotel by walking on soft pine needles through a primeval forest. We stayed at 3 of the Amankora resorts and this one had the friendliest staff and best food. Sangay and Lotay, our guide and driver, were absolutely the best ever! We spent a week with them with endless learning, fun and shared wisdom. I cannot imagine a better hotel experience staying in Bhutan and give them the highest recommendations.

it is the largest and the first-established amankora. it is located 30minutes away from the Paro airport in a very quiet area. it is surrounded by the woods, viewing the dzong and the mountain peaks. The feeling of the Bhutan nature is enchanting. |it is very well positioned to visit the Tiger's nest monastery. the living/bar area is very charming. Amankora rooms are standardised across the different locations. The luxury standards of Aman group are highly respected and the staff is really professional.||Unfortunately privacy is not fully guaranteed without closing the window wooden shutters. this is pity as the view is very relaxing. From my room i saw inside 6 rooms of my neighbours. I would highly suggest to change the window glasses (anti-reflection) or to find a solution by consulting the architect....

The very first Aman in Bhutan made this stay extra special. Phuntsho and his team made sure that we were pampered.|Amazing hot stone bath, great archery (although i prefer the one in Punakha which was overlooking the rice paddy field) but the path heading up there made it a mystery. Great outdoor bbq / chill out place. The room was the exact same layout that i've had in Punakha and it just felt like home straightaway, just remember to close the window shade if you are heading to the shower!

Another great hotel in Bhutan that I could not recommend more. The rooms are perfect, the best shower ever. The food was excellent and loved the daily activities like a calligrapher. Sitting outside for breakfast was also a real highlight

This was our first extended stay in an Aman hotel. We had spent three nights at Amandari in Ubud, Indonesia, and had visited Amangalla in Galle, Sri Lanka. For our trip to Bhutan, which we had been planning for 10 years, Aman seemed the right choice for a foreign destination filled with adventure and spirituality. We arrived at the airport and our guide who would be with us for the entire 10 days picked us up and took us to the first lodge. ||We were welcomed at the entrance with hot towels and a “welcome home”. Coming from NY, I was skeptical. Most hotels attempt to create a home-like environment, I wasn’t sure how homelike this would be in a place we had never visited before. I was quickly convinced otherwise.||Amankora has 5 lodges spread across the tiny Kingdom, which function as one system. We were lucky enough to visit all of them. Built about 20 years ago, the lodges’ architecture reflects the Bhutanese fortresses that dot the landscape. The locations are set near Royal grounds or spiritual areas, and the commons spaces look out over the beautiful views and surroundings. A surprising element was that the suites have a similar layout across all the lodges, so you quickly become accustomed to the space when you travel to a new destination.||But the Aman is not alone in this game. In the past five years, other hotel chains like Six Senses, have set-up lodges in the same locations with newer facilities and architecture. The distinguishing factor for us was not the “hard” product but the “soft” product - the care the staff and teams provided across all the sites. When we ordered a green smoothie at breakfast at the first lodge, the same drink was provided every morning across the other four lodges as well. Pillow types were remembered in the rooms, lodge managers would greet us and wave goodbye at departure, even the spa attendants knew that we liked doing yoga at 7am in the morning, and reserved us a space.||We went during the shoulder season, expecting monsoon rains to dampen our plans or prevent certain activities. Instead, the weather seemed to cooperate with us throughout the entire journey at outside festivals, mountain hikes, and long bike rides. The benefit to the uncertain weather was that there were fewer guests at the lodges, since it wasn’t peak season, and the staff’s attention was exclusively on us.||We didn’t want to leave by the end. A Buddhist principle is that all things in life are impermanent. Saying goodbye to our guide and driver was harder than we thought. It’s not easy to leave a place this thoughtful in its arrangements, but we are looking forward to returning home soon.

Best property in the world. Staffs are faultless in delivering any services to their guests. Rooms are so cozy at the very peaceful locations with wonderful views around all their five lodges spread around Bhutan. My guests loved all of them and I am sure your guests would love too.

When we arrived it was 5 degrees Celsius and the manager ask us if we wanted to have our room warmed up!!! So I was cold on my room which was not clean…. And the cleaning es of the room didn’t improve over my three days stay. The rooms are a bit old, there is only a shower head, and we could not close the door of the shower. The cooling/ heating system is under the sinks for the whole room. Their room design is the same all over Bhutan and have serious flows despite being very large and quite good looking. The property is far from the town and it’s all included however the choice of food is poor and does not wary over your stay. The communal table in the dining room was not clean either. There was absolutely no personal connection with the staff., we could have been in a big hotel in town and probably received a better service. Overall this property lives on the Aman reputation.

Amankora Paro was our final stop on our week-long visit to Bhutan. It is the largest (24 rooms) of the Amankora lodges and also in one of the more touristy parts of the country so we were not sure what to expect.||The rooms are spread across six buildings and there is also a large lodge building which has an expansive lounge and bar with views of the Drukgyel Dzong. Downstairs is a communal dining room, library and an outdoor space spread across a series of wooden and stone decks alongside firepits and bisected by a small stream that provides lovely background sounds. Amankora Paro has the largest spa of the five lodges with a beautiful yoga room, large sauna and steam room and several treatment areas for massages and hot stone baths.||As per all the lodges, the food was stellar. The breakfast offers a continental spread (helpful for folks getting up early to do Tiger’s Nest) but then the same great Bhutanese and Western options for a slower, a la carte breakfast. For lunch and dinner, there is a lot of variety, and I found this lodge to have the best Western offerings and appreciated how flexible the kitchen was with requested dishes too (I wanted to try a lot of Bhutanese staples before we departed).||One advantage of the lodges size is that they offer cultural programming basically every day, including calligraphy, prayer flag printing, yoga and live music. The main tourism focus in the area is definitely the Tiger’s Nest hike. We left the lodge before 7am in order to get to the monastery as it opened (and before a massive amount of other tourists appeared). Our guide and driver both did the hike with us and made sure we had water and some snacks throughout. Our guide’s advice to wake up early was exactly right as when I was departing the monastery I ran into a huge wave of tourists just arriving to the top. At that point the line for photos started to get quite long. The hike itself was pretty challenging (especially if you want to get to the top first), but you can take a donkey up 2/3rds of the way, there is a nice cafe halfway up the mountain and Aman actually leases a house in a grove nearby where they can offer meals and massages before or immediately after the hike. While in Paro we also did some souvenir shopping, visited the local Paro Tsechu festival and Dzong.||Service was exceptionally strong here as well despite the higher room count. Housekeeping really shone with super-fast laundry service turnaround on our departure day. The little touches continued with turndown gifts, thoughtful notes and goodbye housemade brownies in lovely packaging as we headed to the airport. Our guide, Jamba, was really helpful throughout the entire stay, and especially around departure because Modi was flying out at the same time, so we shifted our schedule a few times in order to maximize time at the lodge while still getting to the airport before the roads were shut down.||Paro is (as far as Bhutan goes) a relatively touristy area, and I think Amankora does a great job of keeping the quality and authenticity of the experiences high while offering the amenities of a larger hotel. I would recommend only two nights here (unless you want to avail yourself of the spa extensively or do additional hiking) as I think you can do all of the best activities here (including Tiger’s Nest) in a day with some recovery time, and the other regions (Punakha, Gangtey, Bumthang) offer much more in terms of culture and unique experiences.||For what it is though — a strong ending to a visit in Bhutan near Tiger’s Nest and the airport — Amankora Paro is about as good as it could get!