Prince William and Kate Middleton Needed a “Stiff Drink” After Terrifying Moment on Royal Tour

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 20 March 2022

Earlier this weekend, Prince William and Kate Middleton touched down in Belize, the first stop on their three-country Caribbean tour in honor of Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee this year. (They’ll head to Jamaica next, and then the Bahamas.) The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been around the world together on royal tours—from Australia to Pakistan to Canada and the U.S.—but, on a seven-day trip to India in 2016, a moment happened that was so frightening it left the couple in “need of a stiff drink,” according to a royal expert.

As a part of the royal tour, William and Kate visited Kaziranga National Park, home to tigers and elephants. During their visit to the park, there was, according to the Mirror, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in neighboring Myanmar that was so strong tremors could be felt in the park where the Cambridges were.

For their part, royal reporters covering the tour were checking into their hotel when the earthquake hit. Katie Nicholl, a royal expert who was part of the group, told Yahoo’s Royal Box “we were checking into our hotel when the ground was literally shaking, trembling,” she said. “The chandeliers were shaking. We evacuated the hotel very, very quickly.”

William and Kate were on even less stable ground out in the park.

“The Duke and Duchess were out in a field, in a hut in stilts,” Nicholl said. “It was a terrifying moment for them. William needed a stiff drink after that, as did Kate.”

Shortly after the earthquake, a spokesperson for the couple confirmed they were safe and well, and the tour went on as planned.

But that wasn’t the only terrifying moment for the couple on a royal tour—on a trip in 2019 to Pakistan, the couple’s airplane got caught up in an electrical storm while in the air from Lahore to Islamabad, bumping and rolling side to side, per PEOPLE.

And, despite the pilot’s best efforts to land the plane at two different airports in Islamabad, the plane had to divert back to Lahore, from where it originated. The 25-minute flight ultimately took two hours.

Ever one with a joke, experienced pilot William kidded with the media on board that he was the one flying the plane.

Here’s hoping for no earthquakes or bumpy flights on this royal tour.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.