The marked rock
Tang Rimochen takes its name — 'the one with marks' — from the great rock face against which it is built, streaked with natural patterns that Bhutanese tradition reads as the imprint of the tiger-skin robe of Guru Rinpoche, the master who brought Vajrayana Buddhism across the Himalaya in the 8th century and who is held to have meditated at this spot. To stand before the striped rock is to stand at one of the places where the landscape itself is understood to carry the memory of the Guru's presence — the kind of site, common in Bhutan, where geology and devotion meet, and the rock becomes a relic.