For the last few years, Wangda Dorje and Tshering Choden have been the public face of HIV/Aids in Bhutan. They were among a group of five who were the first in the country to come out as HIV-positive - in front of the King, and then on national television.
Wangda Dorje and Tshering Choden have four young children. It's summer in Bhutan, and the sounds of a city under construction, come clattering in through the windows of their two-room flat in the capital, Thimphu. In the kitchen, their 12-year-old daughter is washing up, while the younger children play tag in the tiny living room. The TV is on and the flat is spotless. They seem like a model family, but their lives have been far from ordinary.
It all began in 2006 when Choden was three months pregnant with her second child. She and Dorje were on their way back from hospital, where they had just had a routine pregnancy check-up, when Dorje's phone rang. It was the hospital asking them to return urgently. Not knowing what the matter could be, they quickly made their way back. They were shown into a bare white room with a table and four chairs.
Two hospital counsellors, a man and a woman, sat silently looking at Dorje and Choden without uttering a word. "For some time they actually looked at each other, as if they were in too much pain to tell us what they had to say. Then, quite abruptly, the male counsellor asked my wife to go outside," says Dorje. "Then I was really worried. My pulse was racing.
Once Choden had gone outside, the counsellor told Dorje, "The HIV is very active in your body and also your wife's." Dorje looks pale, the shock visible as he recalls this life-changing moment.
"I couldn't speak a word for some time. I was completely lost. Then finally, after some time, the only thought that came to mind was infidelity," he says emphatically, staring at me directly. "I immediately suspected my wife of being unfaithful. Anger rose up so quickly, I felt hurt and furious."
But Dorje then asked the counsellor who was infected first, him or Choden, who was then just 18. He replied: "By looking at the body immunity level it looks like you were infected a long time before your wife.
That changed everything. Dorje shakes his head. "I felt really emotional, guilty and sad." He pauses. "Then the counsellor called my wife back into the room. I couldn't bear to look at her face, she was so young.
I was very shocked, I was trembling all over," says Choden. "I couldn't say anything, I was on the verge of crying. And because I was very young, I thought I was going to die.
Dorje had been a drug user in his late adolescence, after a failed relationship. It was then that he had contracted the disease through shared needles. He had not even known that this was possible until the doctors explained it to him.