Far Out

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii

Part One: The Golden Age
1 Building the Road to Kathmandu: Steps in the West’s Journey to the East 3
2 Making Nepal a Destination: The Cultural Politics of Early Tourism 26
3 Mountains, Monsters, and Monks: Nepal in the 1950s Western Popular Imagination 45
4 The Key to an Oriental World: Boris Lissanevitch, Kathmandu’s Royal Hotel, and the “Golden Age” of Tourism in Nepal 64
5 Jung Bahadur Coapsingha: John Coapman, Hunting, and the Origins of Adventure Tourism in Nepal 94

Part Two: Hippie Nepal
6 The Great Rucksack Revolution: Western Youth on the Road to Kathmandu 129
7 “Kathmandu or Bust”: Countercultural Longing and the Rise of Freak Street 164
8 “Something Bog and Glorious and Magnificently Insane”: Hippie Kathmandu 200
9 Hippie ko Pala (The Age of Hippie) 235
10 Nepal’s Discovery of Tourism and the End of the Hippie Era 271

Part Three: Adventure Tourism
11 Adventure Nepal: Trekking, Thamel, and the New Tourism 297
12 Imbibing Easter Wisdom: Nepal as Dharma Destination 323

Reference 367
Index 383