Chhumey sits between roughly 2,600 and 3,100 metres, and the cold there is the whole reason Yathra exists. Before it became a handicraft for visitors, the thick yak- and sheep-wool cloth was what a household wore against the weather and slept under — coats, raincoats, bedding. The bold geometric patterns came later to the market than to the bed.
The training was organised by Bhutan's Department of Media, Creative Industry and Intellectual Property. Its director, Sonam Penjor, framed the work plainly: the weavers are being prepared for a Geographical Indication application covering naturally dyed Yathra from Chhumey — a certificate that would tell a buyer this cloth came from this valley and no other.
The old palette was never only mugwort. Madder was gathered in the forests nearby, indigo grew in household gardens, and the leaves of pangtse gave yellow. Lac travelled up from eastern Bhutan; the mordants came from Tibet. Even the local process leaned on long roads. Madder-dyed yarn was prized because it held its light and deepened with age — the opposite of what cheap chemical thread from India offered when it arrived, and the reason it lost.
Most of the raw wool in Chhumey is now imported too, from India and some from Switzerland, because Bhutanese fleece has grown expensive by comparison. Bleached Indian wool runs from about Nu 300 a kilogram to Nu 1,200 for the better grades, and a finished piece sells for roughly Nu 600 to Nu 1,800.
Bumthang Yathra is one of four products in Bhutan's newly launched national GI system, beside Bumthang honey, buckwheat flour from Dhur-Tandingang and fermented yak cheese from Merak-Sakteng. Officials describe the mark as a way to separate the genuine article from its imitations. For the women who weave in groups of four to six, facing one another at their backstrap looms, it is something narrower and more useful: a reason for the slower colour to be worth more than the fast one.