The watching eyes
Chendebji is built in the Nepali style — modelled on the great stupa of Boudhanath in Kathmandu, with a broad white dome and a square tower above it painted on all four sides with the all-seeing eyes of the Buddha, gazing out across the valley. This form is rare in Bhutan, where stupas usually follow the local Bhutanese pattern, and it gives Chendebji its distinctive, faintly otherworldly presence by the river. Tradition holds that it was built to subdue and pin down a demon that haunted the spot — the recurring Bhutanese motif of the sacred structure raised to pacify a troubled place — and that the relics of the harmful spirit lie beneath it.