The King and Queen and Bhutanese Children

As we've traveled wherever we go there are photos of the current, the fifth, King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, and his beautiful wife, Queen Jetsun Pena Wangchuk.  Sometimes the photo also pictures them with their new son, Prince Jigme Namgyel Wangchuk, who is the crown Prince.

The history of Bhutan goes back to tribal times in the 2nd Century and is full of amazing myths based on Buddhist legends.  It's too complicated for me to recount on this blog, and I've only glazed the surface of its complexity, but it's fascinating to read about and explains why Bhutan is the compassionate, gentle country it is today.

They have only had a system of King and Queens since 1907 and the fourth King had four wives - all sisters from the Bumthang valley.  They had ten children between them and the current King descends from them.  He married Jetsun Pema, ten years his junior, pictured above.  They make a handsome couple and everyone worships them.  They are benevolent, good natured royals, like his father before him. The current King was educated both inside and outside of Bhutan attending a defense school in Delhi, the Wheatley School in Massachusetts, and Oxford in England.  While men in Bhutan can take more than one wife--if they can afford it--this King has announced that he will only have one wife.  Bhutan is moving swiftly into the modernized world and he sets the example. They now have laws forbidding spousal abuse and I was told by our guide that the men get a stiff sentence, as opposed to just twenty years ago when they weren't punished at all.  In general, things have been changing rapidly since the nineties and what was the usual tradition of getting married and moving into one or the other parent's houses has begun to crumble and young married couples can go to their capital city, Thimpu, and get an apartment on their own.  When they have children the grandmothers share the care of the child as the wife and husband go to work.  They need to have an extra bedroom in their apartment for the mother to stay since she sometimes stays for six months while her husband remains at the family residence - usually in a beautiful rural valley somewhere. Bhutan is having the same issue with the rural youth wanting to go to the two main cities, Thimpu and Paro, instead of working the land as their parents did before them.  Everyone gets free education now and the children study English for five years.  Stephanie and I were quite surprised when we could easily converse with school children.  They asked us where we were from and what did we like about Bhutan?  Then they run off to play.  No worries about someone snatching your child here - children walk home together playing as they go.  Just beautiful!

 Traditional Dress Uniform for the school-age children.

The girls like to match the red color with their hair ties.

The girl's hair must be tied back in some way.

Even the litttle children are in traditional Kiras.  

Young woman in the traditional manner of carrying the baby tied to her back so that she can operate her handmade Bhutanese paper shop in Thimpu Handicraft Market.   Women have equal rights in Bhutan and are able to inherit property when their parents die.  Increasingly young women are opening and managing their own shops to augment the family income.

Bhutan is a Constitutional Democratic Monarchy.  They have a parliament and that body oversees most internal affairs while the King has the power to veto Foreign affairs.  They have only had two voting periods to date but it seems to be going fairly well.  The constitution was just created and voted on in 2005 & 2006.The Constitution was officially adopted in 2008.  The Bhutanese voted again in 2013 and the first party lost all its seats and the People's Democratic Party swept to power in the National Assembly.  The Prime Minister met with John Kerry in India in 2015.  According to my Lonely Planet book the most contemporary and complete history of Bhutan in English is The History of Bhutan by Karma Phuntso.