Bhutan Travel Guide: A 10-Day Itinerary ✈️ Based on my visit to Bhutan. Written by Debarun Sana. What this trip actually costs — the part most guides skip Bhutan runs on a deliberate "High Value, Low Volume" tourism model, and the core mechanism is the Sustainable Development Fee (SDF) — a mandatory government fee charged per person, per night, on top of whatever you pay your tour operator for flights, hotels, meals, and guiding. For most international visitors (including U.S. citizens), that's currently USD 100 per person per night , plus a one-time non-refundable USD 40 visa fee, with this reduced SDF rate confirmed through August 31, 2027 (it was previously $200/night before the reduction). For a 10-day trip, that's $1,000+ in government fees alone before accounting for anything else — genuinely worth budgeting for explicitly rather than discovering partway through planning. Indian nationals get a substantially different, cheaper deal : rat...