Word: bhutan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Castro was seen and photographed with a wide variety of Third World leaders, ranging from Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito, 87 - the last surviving co-founder of the nonaligned movement - to Communist fellow travelers like Viet Nam's Premier Pham Van Dong to such obscure eminences as Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuk. Castro and his aides orchestrated the arrival of celebrities well: one of the few discordant notes was struck by a brass band that mistakenly played the Egyptian national anthem as Castro greeted Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, one of Egypt's bitterest...
...father, Mahendra. The correspondent arrived for that occasion aboard a rickety DC-3 that "slithered low over the Himalayan foothills, searching for the gap in the mountains through which we slipped into the Katmandu Valley." He has since reported on coronations of two other Himalayan monarchs, the Kings of Bhutan and Sikkim. Over the years, the Shangri-la quality of the mountain kingdoms has been diminished by the encroachment of Western civilization. "The one-room thatch shack that was the airport building at Katmandu's Gauchar Airport is long gone," Shepherd reports, "and the red brick complex that replaced...
...monarchs, will probably need more than a raven to protect him. Shortly before his coronation, the Bhutanese announced that they had broken up a plot by Tibetan refugees to kill the King, burn the Tashichhodzong and take over the country for themselves. The plotters had apparently hoped to use Bhutan as a springboard to take back neighboring Tibet from the Chinese. The schemers allegedly included the beauteous Tibetan mistress of the late King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk, who died of a heart ailment at age 44 in 1972. Other plots to take over the government at Thimphu, one of them...
Looming across the Himalayas from Bhutan is the threat of China, which claims some of the small (18,000 sq. mi.) kingdom. It was because of the Chinese shadow, in fact, that the King's father began to modernize Bhutan and bring it closer to India, which advises the tiny country on its foreign affairs and trains its army. Roads to India's West Bengal State were carved through mountains and jungles, and in 1968 the first airstrip was laid down, a step that immediately cut travel time from West Bengal to Bhutan from five dangerous and uncomfortable...
Like the fictional inhabitants of Shangri-La, the Bhutanese believe in moderation in all things. Almost everyone, from the King himself to the peasants who farm the gentle, terraced hillsides, seems content with Bhutan as it is now, 95% medieval and 5% modern. In an effort to boost the economy and make life a little more comfortable, however, the government is planning to let in its first tourists-in moderation of course. Up to now, Bhutan's chief money earner abroad has been the sale of its colorful postage stamps, some of which are miniature LPs with the Bhutanese...