Articles > Sikkim: A Not-Quite Fairytale

Extreme hypergamy — the art of marrying radically upwards — involves vaulting from plebeian to princess in two easy syllables: "I do". Right royal levitations of note in the past half-century include Camilla to Charles, Grace to Rainier, and Hope to Palden.

Hope? Palden? Not long after young New York socialite, Hope Cook married Crown Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal of Sikkim in 1963 he was crowned Chogyal, or King, of this handkerchief-sized eastern Himalayan domain. She, as Gyalmo or Royal Consort, became Queen. At that time, Sikkim was a semi-autonomous domain, a time warp Ruritania of 7100 sq km that had never been fully part of the British Raj and thus evaded entanglement in Mother India's chaotic sari at Independence in 1947.

As absolute ruler, His Highness King Palden, 12th Chogyal and 6th Maharajah of Sikkim, was part of a minority Tibetan Buddhist elite who had held sway for centuries over a population of mostly ethnic Nepalese Hindus. Regardless of the messy political implications of this, Hope relished her fairytale role as the American Queen of a Himalayan Shangri-la. India, however, was less than thrilled to have a charismatic and capable foreigner beside the throne, especially once the royal couple began entertaining powerful foreign figures and angling for national sovereignty for Sikkim.

In those days little Gangtok, the 1677-metre altitude capital of Sikkim, looked like a Raj-era hill station, with its modest collection of buildings and bazaars cascading down a ridge that was crowned by the Chogyal's palace and its Tibetan-style Tsuklakhang gompha. Today, the Gangtok that I visit has grown to around 30,000 people — still not much more than a large village by Indian standards — and now tumbles much farther downhill, its tiered streets connected by a snakes and ladders assemblage of switchback roads and stairways. The palace and gompha still stand, as well maintained but sombre echoes of a fallen dream.

Gyalmo Hope, along with her Chogyal, cut a romantic figure in the late 1960s until the inconvenient beast of democracy began snapping at the heels of their 330 year-old monarchy. Sikkim's impoverished under-classes were, as they say, murmuring uneasily. Meanwhile, on the sidelines the ruthless Indira Gandhi was stirring the pot, with India even putting it about that Hope was a CIA stooge.

In April 1973 the unrest in Gangtok came to a head and the Chogyal was forced to seek India's protection in calming his disgruntled subjects. The price of "protection" was the occupation of his country. Much like the Chinese in neighbouring Tibet, the post-colonial Indians arrived in Sikkim and themselves became colonisers, never to depart again.

New Delhi — which only ever accorded him the title of Maharaja, and definitely not King — left Palden on his throne as a morose figurehead with little honour and no power in his own land. Demotion from Queen to a mere Maharani in a runt-of-the-litter Indian state was not the fairytale outcome of which Hope had dreamed.

The marriage soon went sour and she decamped to New York in August 1973 with their two children, Hope Leezum and Palden Gyurmed, finally divorcing the Chogyal in 1979. A referendum in 1975 delivered the coup de grace to his dream of a sovereign country, with the Sikkimese voting to become Indians. Deposed and deserted, Palden, 59, died of throat cancer in 1982, still refusing to endorse what he saw as India invasion of his country.

A yak is a rug with horns designed by a committee of camels. Yaks are not happy about this indignity, nor any other aspect of their burdened existence. The only improvement on the bad-tempered yak is its more docile offspring, a half-cow, half-shag rug arrangement called a dzo.

I leave Gangtok and its fading memories of Palden and Hope, and climb into the green crush of Himalayan mountain swells, to places where the only transport is the cranky yak and the dozy dzo. Here I loiter for a few days at 3000 metres in the little woodsmoke-and-prayerflag village of Tsokha. It could be the capital of Yakteria. All day the dzo trains plod slowly up the furrow of dung and mud that is the main, and only "street" of this hamlet of ethnic Tibetans. The beasts, each bedecked with a neck bells, file past like a procession of walking windchimes.

Reaching Tsokha had involved both a comedy of errors and a few raptures of the heights. Along with six other Western trekkers, a trail guide, chef, kitchen boys, porters and dzo wranglers — all under the avuncular eye of my old friend Garry Weare of World Expeditions — we set off from the village of Yuksom and began winding our way upwards. Sunny trails led in and out of oak and rhododendron forests, past rattling cascades and up, ever up towards, well, to 8598 metre Mt Kangchendzonga, if you really want to go to extremes.

Blue ridges, interlocked like fingers, fall behind us as we look back towards the plains of India. The wide-eyed children who come out to wave at us don't yet even know the mantra that rural infants from Kashmir to Kathmandu seem to be born chanting: "One pen, mister, one bon-bon." It is innocence like this that makes Sikkim, in a sense, "the new Nepal" — although its vistas and range of treks will never rival those of glorious but troubled Nepal.

As we plod on I feel an odd sensation in my foot. The sole of my trekking boot has peeled back and is flapping like a gossip's jaw. Great. Garry's first aid training comes in handy as he skilfully binds up the boot with surgical tape. Half an hour later I feel an odd sensation in my foot. The other one. I look down to see that the sole of my right boot has blown out in sympathy with its partner. Double great. Thereafter, I flap uphill for the rest of the day and by the time we arrive at camp — a little pasture below the one-yak village of Bakhim — I still have boots attached to my ankles, although neither one has a sole. I am effectively walking in my socks. Upon learning that my much-loved boots were only 15 years old, the fulsome sympathy I earn from my sniggering mates amounts to "Demand a refund, dude!"

The kitchen crew get to work with pots and pans but there seems to be a lack of personnel, not to mention several tents and other gear. Garry stays cool, while his mates Almas, the guide and Jeet, the chef look less than amused. Jeet plunges downhill into the now stygian darkness of the forest, looking for four porters who have gone AWOL. Hours later he emerges from the Gothic gloom with the sheepish-looking porters in line astern. Far down the mountain, it seems, they had stopped for a few refreshing belts of local hooch, and then a few more — which had clarified for them the pointlessness of slogging uphill in the dark hour with wussy luxuries like a mess tent for a bunch of latter day bwanas. Not unreasonably, they had simply called it a day, or by then, a night.

Morning breaks at 2700 metres, crystal clear, brilliant, frosty-breathed — and sodden underfoot from the overnight rain. Bootless, I face the Himalayas, shod as for a day at the beach. I'm wearing sneakers for a hike to over 4000 metres through slush and snow. Nevertheless, after a big porridge and omelette breakfast, it's off to Tsokha we go.

We tramp upwards through ancient pine forests, meeting few other trekkers and making fair time but, having lost my soles, I start to lose heart: mud-filled sneakers and frost-snipped toes are the unappealing prospect for the nights ahead. At Tsokha I throw in the towel, or the boot, and let the others go on while I loiter in this snoozy village, drinking chai below a sapphire blue sky.

My pals return next morning hooting, of course, about the gobsmacking spectacle of the higher vistas. They had trekked to a pass near Dzongri that, at 4030 metres, allows hikers here their first real Himalayan panorama. They had seen the crowns of Kangchendzonga, third highest mountain in the world, and in the foreground Mt Pandim, lit in the dawn sky like a brilliant wall of rock, fire and ice — and all of it perfectly framed for photographers by tall, wind-whipped Buddhist prayers flags.

Meanwhile, I had spent the time beside a smoke-stained teashop with its owner, Lakho telling me tales of the mountains and of mountaineers who had come through her village, including the Everest pioneer Tenzing Norgay. She mentions that a regular visitor here is none other than Princess Hope Leezum, daughter of the late Chogyal and his American bride.

Hope Leezum, it seems, didn't grow up to be a regular New York princess (who would never risk her Manholo-slippered feet on Tsokha's perilous Yak Poo Street) but had returned, having studied law, to Gangtok where she still has the title of Maharaj Kumari (Princess), runs a travel agency and is married, I am told, to a policeman.

Leaving Tsokha, our trekking party heads back to Yuksom, down through the lichen-covered rocks and rhododendrons, dodging the chiming dzos and negotiating at one point a near-vertical landslip. A raging, late-monsoonal cataract had recently swept away a suspension footbridge, forcing us to cross the torrent by balancing on its substitute, three rickety logs.

Back in Gangtok I wander up to the old Royal Palace which, other than having its own impressive gompha, more resembles a modest mansion than a Himalayan Versailles. A jovial Indian policewoman won't permit me to enter the grounds, explaining, "Tourists used to be allowed in the Palace, but some took pictures and sold them to magazines. The Chogyal doesn't allow it anymore." The Chogyal? I ask my guide, "But he died years ago!"

"His son from his first marriage, before Hope Cooke, was consecrated and coronated (sic) as the new Chogyal." His Highness Wangchuk Namgyal, 13th Chogyal of Sikkim is, I learn, a reclusive fellow, in his fifties, Harrow educated, but now living "in meditation somewhere in the mountains on the border of Tibet, except when he's in his palace." Ah, a mystic-king flitting from Himalayan cave to palace — another royal fairytale takes shape.

As we leave the palace gate a small jeep sweeps by. I catch of a glimpse of the passenger, a handsome, dark-haired woman in her mid-30s. "That's Hope Leezum," says my guide. I did but see her passing by — a Princess in a Suzuki, married to a cop and running a travel shop. It seems a prosaic but happy enough ending to a fairytale-that-wasn't.

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