Last ruler of remote
Buddhist kingdom in Nepal dies
16 Dec 2016
AFP
KATHMANDU - The last king
of the isolated Himalayan region of Upper Mustang died on Friday in
Kathmandu, eight years after he lost his royal title when his
centuries-old Buddhist monarchy was abolished.
Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista, who was 86, reigned
over the arid kingdom high on the Tibetan plateau for more than
half a century before stepping down in 2008 when Nepal abolished
its own monarchy.
"He passed away at 1 am at the hospital this
morning. He was admitted three days ago. He had not been well on
and off since about a year. But was having more difficulty recently
because of the cold," the former king's nephew Tsewang Bista told
AFP.
"We will have rituals until Sunday and the final
rites will be performed on Monday in Kathmandu," he
said.
Nepal annexed the former kingdom of Lo in the
18th century, but allowed the king to retain his title.
Bista succeeded his father Angun Tenzing Tandul
in 1964, continuing a family line that could trace its lineage back
to Ame Pal, the warrior who founded the kingdom in 1380.
He supported a CIA-funded guerrilla campaign to
oust Chinese forces from Tibet after a failed uprising in 1959,
allowing Upper Mustang to be used as a base.
Bista had lived most of his life in the medieval
walled capital of Lo Manthang, but moved to Kathmandu over a year
ago after he became ill, suffering from heart and kidney
problems.
He acted as a spiritual leader to the local Loba
community, who speak a variant of Tibetan and are culturally and
linguistically closer to Tibet than Nepal.
Ringed by vast canyons and imposing red
mountains, the remote kingdom has only recently begun to see
glimmers of modernity after a new road connecting Upper Mustang to
China and India was completed in 2014.
The region was closed to visitors until 1992 and
numbers are still strictly regulated.