Arrival in Punakha

After two days off the grid (what a weird feeling that was!), we slowly made our way to Punakha -- four+ hours on the 'hell road', with several waits while the road was cleared of landslides and we worked our way around oncoming traffic, with inches to spare...
 
Anyhow, here we are. It's nighttime and right now, across the street from the hotel, there's a night archery tournament taking place. Archery is the national sport here and people take it seriously: they have rituals, dances and incantations when an arrow strikes the target, and they perform in full uniform. It's impressive to watch: the targets are 150m away from the archers, with opposing teams on either end of the two targets. The guys must be good, 'cos they are literally standing next to the target as the arrow flies in! 
 
This afternoon, we visited Punakha's temple of fertility. The god in whose honor the temple was erected (pardon the pun) defeated his enemies using his phallus. That emblem is visible everywhere around the area: painted on houses, carved in wood, depicted on drawings. You can't forget where you are ;) 
 
Bhutanese visit the temple to help them in their quest to have kids. There's a whole ritual associated with that quest: husband and wife go together; the wife walks around the temple three times carrying a huge wood carving of a phallus; offerings are made; names are drawn randomly from a stack: if it's a girl's name, that's what the couple will have a few months down the road. Our guide and his wife went through that process after 8 childless years and now have a little girl. For the first year after the birth of the child, the couple returns every other month to give offerings and thanks. The fertility god (otherwise known as the Divine Mad Man) is heretofore known as the real father of the child :)
 
In contrast to the other three places we'd just visited, I thought this one had all the hallmarks of a 'tourist trap': there were more foreigners than locals, the small road leading up to the temple was a gauntlet of tacky shops, and the locals were none too friendly. I can't really blame them with hordes like ours spilling into their lives, cameras at hand, snapping pix of them all the time...
 

Tomorrow, we're off for a 3-4 hr hike through rice paddies and up the mountain to see another dzong (I am slightly overdosing on those things at this point).