The newly married king of Bhutan and his 21-year-old bride greeted huge crowds of well-wishers on Friday during a day-long trip spent largely on foot returning to their palace in the capital.
The popular 31-year-old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck crowned Jetsun Pema, the commoner daughter of an airline pilot, on Thursday in a colorful Buddhist ceremony in the ancient capital of Punakha.
The staunchly royalist people of this remote Himalayan nation, which has resisted outside influences for centuries, turned out in their tens of thousands on the -second day of festivities to mark the occasion.
Photo: AFP
The royal couple set off in the early morning from Punakha — normally a two-and-half-hour drive from the capital along roads with stunning views over mountains dotted with monasteries — and finished at after 8pm.
The smiling monarch, holding hands with the queen throughout, joked and chatted with his subjects, many of whom bowed their heads in deference while offering white silk scarves to be blessed or other gifts.
Asked how many hands he had shaken as he neared the end of the day, Wangchuck said: “I don’t know. I haven’t been counting. I’ve just been enjoying myself.”
His habit of spontaneously diving into crowds, greeting people and picking up babies is known to exasperate his security detail, but is a core part of his appeal to his 700,000 adoring subjects.
“The king thanked us that we waited so long for them and he said he was happy to be back in Thimphu,” said Pramod Pradhan, an 18-year-old student who spoke to the king. “I’m going to share that with my mum right now.”
When he was crowned in 2008 in Punakha, he also did much of the return journey to the capital Thimphu on foot, traveling only by car through the most unpopulated mountainous areas. The streets of Thimphu have been decorated with flashing lights and the official poster of the royal couple and the national flag adorn lampposts, building facades and roundabouts.
Amid clouds of incense and chanting monks, Pema was crowned queen at the end of a series of elaborate rituals in the 17th-century fortified monastery in Punakha that served as the headquarters of the country’s ancient capital.
The “Dragon King,” an Oxford graduate who came to power in 2008 at the start of democracy in Bhutan, said afterwards that he had waited to get married, but was certain that he had found “the right person.”
“She is a wonderful human being,” he told a small group of foreign reporters.
Bhutan banned television until 1999 and is the only nation in the world whose government pursues “Gross National Happiness” for its people instead of economic growth.
Dasho Karma Ura from the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a think tank, said the queen would bring a “new dimension of feminine leadership” to the country. The previous king had four wives, all sisters, who shunned the limelight.
“Bhutanese youth are starting to look up to her, to dress up like her and trying to be an attractive personality like her,” he said in an interview.
Bhutan, which has never been colonized, remained in self-imposed isolation for centuries and is still wary of outside influence and the impact of globalization.
The country had no roads or currency until the 1960s and continues to resist mass tourism to this day.
In Nepal, ethnic Nepalese Bhutanese who left the country in the early 1990s, claiming ethnic and political persecution also congratulated the king, while urging him to find a solution that would allow them to return home.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in