Mongar District

View of Mongar town

Regional Referral Hospital, Mongar

Mongar is home to a variety of Bhutanese languages and dialects. In the east, the East Bodish Tshangla (Sharchopkha) is the dominant language, also used as a regional lingua franca.[2]

Central Mongar is the only region where the East Bodish Chali language is spoken, by about at total of 8,200 people in Wangmakhar, Gorsum and Tormazhong villages, mainly in and around Chhali Gewog on the east bank of the Kuri Chhu River.[2]

Southern Mongar is likewise unique for its 1,000 Gongduk speakers living in a few inaccessible villages of Gongdue Gewog near the Kuri Chhu river. The language appears to be the sole representative of a unique branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family [3] and retains the complex verbal agreement system of Proto-Tibeto-Burman.[4]

In southwestern Mongar, residents speak Khengkha, an East Bodish language closely related to Bumthangkha languages including Kurtöp. Bumthangkha itself is also spoken by the natives of extreme northwest Mongar. Residents of the Kuri Chhu valley of northern Mongar speak Chochangachakha language, a Central Bodish language very closely related to Dzongkha, the national language.[2][5][6][7][8]

Mongar is divided into seventeen village blocks (or gewogs):[9]

The Western Mongar District contains part of the Thrumshingla National Park (the gewogs of Saling and the Tsamang) and the northeastern Mongar District contains part of the Bumdeling Wildlife Sanctuary (the gewog of Sharmung).[9][10]

The Kuri Chhu river flows through the Mongar District valley. The Kuri Chhu, a major river of eastern Bhutan, is a tributary of the Manas River system, which is the largest river in Bhutan and a major tributary of the Brahmaputra River, the waterway that drains most of the eastern region. [11]

Kuri Chhu River

• Districts of Bhutan
• Kurtoed Province
• Kurmaed Province
• Thrumshing La
• Kuri Chhu