Now I'm back writing about it, mostly for my own sake, to keep me sane and remembering how peaceful I felt during that trip.
After Phobijikah, we made our way back towards the capital, and stopped at Punakah Valley.
It's another lusciously rich valley. Basically most of the places we visited in Bhutan were in deep valleys. The mountans there soared up high on both sdies. Punakah being lower altitude than Phobjikah, it immediately felt warmer and slightly more humid, but still relatively dry. Bhutan kept reminding me of home, here in Tahoe, drier, and mountaneious climate.
After stopping for lunch we took a gentle hike up to Chime Lhakhang temple. Because the temple worships the divine madman whose symbol is the phallas, the village we walked through had many bildings with the phallis adorning the walls. It certainly brought a few giggles from us.
At the temple, we saw many young monks just hanging around playing soccer or chatting, quite a good life.
A stay at Como Uma in Punahka was super luxiourious for me thanks to my sister's generosity. I have a beautiful view of the river. It was most relaxing after some hiking up to more temples the second day.
Alas, we visited the Dzong of Punakah. Another beautiful architecture that combined both civic administrative center with a temple.
On our last day in Punakah we had a picnic by the river. It was quite interesting to see a group of people gathering in nearby. Our guide told us that the village was gathering to vote. It looked like they were discussing issues first before they voted. A pack of stray dogs waited patiently for scraps. And there were a few cows nearby too. It was definitely happening! The dogs were very happy after our driver gave them all our good amount of leftover. Our guide always patted stray dogs or gave them some scraps. The generosity of their hearts were plainly evident in all the small gestures they did without thinking.
