Sikkim: Where There's Hope

Guests in top hats and cutaways mingled with others in fur-flapped caps and knee-length yakskin boots last week outside the tiny Buddhist chapel in Sikkim's dollhouse Himalayan capital of Gangtok. Wedding parcels from Tiffany's were piled side by side with bundled gifts of rank-smelling tiger and leopard skins. Over 28,146-ft. Mount Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain and Sikkim's "protecting deity," hung a blue haze. It was an "auspicious sign," said Gangtok astrologers, for the wedding of a quiet, blue-eyed New York girl, Hope Cooke, 22, and Gyalsay Rimpoche Maha-rajkumar Palden Thondup Namgyal, 39, crown prince of the Indian...