BHUTAN: Two’s a Coronation Crowd

Stretching for some 190 miles along the southern slopes of the Himalayas, north of India and south of Tibet, lies the most remote kingdom in the world. The upland valleys of tiny (18,000 sq. mi.) Bhutan are as green and inviting as those of Shangri-La, and the passes that lead into them just as forbidding. Icy winds howl along the snowswept plains behind the mountain passes to discourage the traveler. Rugged barriers of snow and ice rise as high as 24,000 ft. Dense semitropical growth clogs the lower valleys. Fever haunts the forests, making them uninhabitable to all except endlessly prowling tigers and rhinos.

Time & again attempts by neighboring India to build roads into Bhutan have been halted by the ravages of wild elephants which rip up the road beds and tear down the bridges, but the Bhutanese don’t mind at all. In fact they like it that way, and if by chance a foreigner wishes to brave the nine-day journey by mule-back over the mountains into Bhutan, he must first get a special invitation from the King himself. The King is very careful about choosing the people he invites to Bhutan.

Up to 1907, Bhutan, like Tibet, was ruled jointly by a high lama, the Dharma Raja, who was believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha himself, and a temporal leader, the Deb Raja. Finding a new reincarnation of Buddha when the old one died was always a trouble. It involved waiting several years and then finding a baby who would proclaim his identity by recognizing certain suitable symbols. By 1907 Bhutan’s lamas, grown fat and indolent with centuries of rule, got too lazy to hunt for a new Raja. The government was taken over by a local governor, the Tongsa Penlop, a fighting politician who got himself elected Gyalpo (i.e., King) of the Land of the Thunder-dragon. Knighted by the British, who understood such ambition, Sir Ugyen Wangchuk ruled for 19 years and died in 1926. He was succeeded by his son, Sir

Jigme Wangchuk. Three years ago, to insure a continuance of his privacy, Sir Jigme renewed an old treaty leaving all the foreign affairs of his country to India in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty at home and 500,000 rupees a year. In March 1952, Sir Jigme died.

Last week, in a ceremony which by tradition includes an honor guard of silk-uniformed soldiers, each carrying two swords and a shield of buffalo hide, Sir Jigme’s 24-year-old son, Jigme Dorji, was installed as the third Gyalpo of Thunder-dragon. Two visitors—the eldest son of the Maharaja of neighboring Sikkim and an Indian political agent—were invited over the mountains to see the show. They were the only outsiders present.