We were nearing the end of this day and about to leave Thimphu to drive to Paro when we happened to pass the National Archery Championships, in progress. The match had been going on all day and we were told that it would not finish by the evening and so would have to be continued tomorrow. We watched the match for about thirty minutes.

I took the first photo standing about even with the near end archers who were currently doing the shooting. You can see their target in the center of the photo at the other end of the archery field. The national archery distance in Bhutan is 140 meters or about 460 feet. In the national championship, they used compound bows rather than their regular bamboo bows. One nice thing about Bhutan is that it was easy for me to take a photo over the crowd. You can see more of the crowd in the next photo.

If you had never seen Bhutanese archery, you wouldn’t know what you were in for. If you look at the next photo, you will see an archer preparing to shoot his arrow. Notice the eight colorfully dressed women standing right next to the archer. They are cheerleaders. Each archery team has a set of cheerleaders. One set of cheerleaders stays at each end of the archery field. They stand exceptionally close to the archers as they shoot their arrows. In this case, the cheerleaders are the cheerleaders for the guy who is shooting the arrow. They were swaying back and forth and gently chanting. Our guide said they were saying things like “you are so handsome and good looking and you are so strong and you are one of the best archers in the world and very virile” and things like that. You might also notice that the archer in the photo is very good, based on all the colored scarves on his belt, for points scored.

Now look at the next two photos. This archer is from the other team, not from this cheerleading team. By the second photo, just as he was about to shoot his arrow, they were shouting and jumping and waving their scarves at him and saying things like “you are ugly and stupid and you have a boil on your nose and you are a terrible archer and you can’t hit anything, not to mention your manhood is questionable and your likelihood of fathering children is doubtful” and stuff like that.