Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal

Description

Westerners have long imagined the Himalayas as the world’s last untouched place and a repository of redemptive power and wisdom. Beatniks, hippie seekers, spiritual tourists, mountain climbers—diverse groups of people have traveled there over the years, searching for their own personal Shangri-La. In Far Out, Mark Liechty traces the Western fantasies that captured the imagination of tourists in the decades after World War II, asking how the idea of Nepal shaped the everyday cross-cultural interactions that it made possible. Emerging from centuries of political isolation but eager to engage the world, Nepalis struggled to make sense of the hordes of exotic, enthusiastic foreigners. They quickly embraced the phenomenon, however, and harnessed it to their own ends by building tourists’ fantasies into their national image and crafting Nepal as a premier tourist destination. Liechty describes three distinct phases: the postwar era, when the country provided a Raj-like throwback experience for rich Americans; Nepal’s emergence as an exotic outpost of hippie counterculture in the 1960s; and its rebranding into a hip adventure destination, which began in the 1970s and continues today. He shows how Western projections of Nepal as an isolated place inspired creative enterprises and, paradoxically, allowed locals to participate in the global economy. Based on twenty-five years of research, Far Out blends ethnographic analysis, a lifelong passion for Nepal, and a touch of humor to produce the first comprehensive history of what tourists looked for—and found—on the road to Kathmandu. Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 14 Part One. The Golden Age......Page 16 1. Building the Road to Kathmandu: Steps in the West’s Journey to the East......Page 18 2. Making Nepal a Destination: The Cultural Politics of Early Tourism......Page 41 3. Mountains, Monsters, and Monks: Nepal in the 1950s Western Popular Imagination......Page 60 4. The Key to an Oriental World: Boris Lissanevitch, Kathmandu’s Royal Hotel, and the “Golden Age” of Tourism in Nepal......Page 79 5. Jung Bahadur Coapsingha: John Coapman, Hunting, and the Origins of Adventure Tourism in Nepal......Page 109 Part Two. Hippie Nepal......Page 142 6. The Great Rucksack Revolution: Western Youth on the Road to Kathmandu......Page 144 7. “Kathmandu or Bust”: Countercultural Longing and the Rise of Freak Street......Page 179 8. “Something Big and Glorious and Magnificently Insane”: Hippie Kathmandu......Page 215 9. Hippie Ko Pala (The Age of Hippies)......Page 250 10. Nepal’s Discovery of Tourism and the End of the Hippie Era......Page 286 Part Three. Adventure Tourism......Page 310 11. Adventure Nepal: Trekking, Thamel, and the New Tourism......Page 312 12. Imbibing Eastern Wisdom: Nepal as Dharma Destination......Page 338 References......Page 382 Index......Page 398