Gagging for Adventure

There's nothing like rounding the corner of a Himalayan trail in the rain and finding your cook making a hot meal. Unless your cook is Sikkimese. Our cook-he never offered a name-made good tea and noodle soup. But the rest of his food was an appalling improvisation-exemplified by his signature deep-fried cheese-and-tomato-and-peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich.

The catering is never dull, and neither is the trekking. And while Sikkim is big on adventure, it's a thumbnail of a place, hemmed in by Nepal, China, Bhutan and India. In 1975, this Hobbit-sized realm-a...