Winter Getaways: Take a journey to a magical kingdom Kings, princesses, ancient sects: you'd be forgiven for thinking the storyline was stolen from the latest Disney blockbuster. But before Sikkim became part of India in the mid-Seventies, it had more than its fair share of fairy-tale romance. Lucy Gillmore pays a visit

From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: December 1, 2001| Author: | Copyright information

In the tiny kingdom of Sikkim, adultery used to be a dangerous business for men. If you were caught, your penis would be cut off. It was also financially ruinous. Apart from the mutilation, you were fined the weight of your penis and testicles in gold. Which is probably one of the first ever recorded advantages for being less well-endowed.

But that, of course, was long ago when Sikkim was an ancient Buddhist kingdom squashed between Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and India. Before, in fact, it was swallowed up by the last of these hungry neighbours in 1975.

In the early 1960s the last Chogyal, or ...

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