Couple of North Sikkim at home drink millet beer

Photograph shows Rinchen Namgyal Lachungpa and his wife at home, Lachung, Sikkim.

Related photograph published in: Mountaintop kingdom: Sikkim / photos by Alice S. Kandell; text by Charlotte Y. Salisbury. New York : Norton, 1971, p. 90-91, where image appears with caption: "Rinchen Lachungpa and his wife at home."
"A Tour of the Lost Kingdom: Sikkim" by Dr. Alice S. Kandell and Hope Cooke, Library of Congress, March 13, 2010. Webcast available at: http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4912
Forms part of: Dr. Alice S. Kandell Collection of Sikkim Photographs (Library of Congress).
Also represented in LOT 14034-1, pg. no. 002 (color reference copy).
Gift; Dr. Alice S. Kandell; 2010; (DLC/PP-2010:106).

Palden Thondup Namgyal was the hereditary ruler of the independent Kingdom of Sikkim, located in the eastern Himalayas. He ruled the kingdom from 1963 to 1975, when it was annexed by India. Queen Hope Cooke was an American woman who became the queen consort of Sikkim through her marriage to Palden Thondup Namgyal in 1963. She was a controversial figure in Sikkimese politics.