Whether it's mountaineering, or marijuana. Trekking to Everest, or tripping on LSD.
Getting as high as you can has always been central to the Nepal tourist experience.
This is the story of an American president who tried to nip communism in the bud
by destroying a Himalayan hippie shangri-la.
But in stopping the smokers he sparked a Maoist blowback.
The hippie trail followed the footsteps of the ancient Silk Road.
But instead of trading textiles, its travelers swapped the post-war social conformity of the Western world
for dreams of enlightenment in the East.
Some were fleeing the Vietnam War draft, while others came to find themselves.
For whatever reason, every year from 1965 to 1973, tens of thousands of young people bussed or hitch-hiked
the overland route from Istanbul to Kathmandu.
And the terminus of the hippie trail was a single bustling urban lane, called Jhonche,
rechristened by its new inhabitants as Freak Street.
America's public enemy number one in the United States, is drug abuse.
This will be a worldwide offensive, dealing with the problems of sources of supply
as well as Americans who may be stationed abroad wherever they are in the world.
A number of young Americans have become addicts as they serve abroad.
Whether in Vietnam or Europe, or other places.
Whether or not these young men are tuned in, they've certainly dropped out of the society they knew.
Together they've quietly rejected the practical Western world,
and seem not at all sure that they'll ever want to return.
The hippies weren't the only ones angered by prohibition.
In western Nepal, far from the capital city of Kathmandu,
hashish cultivation was the primary source of income.
Sellers and growers were arrested.
Private property with marijuana growing on it was forfeited to the state.
The destruction of the marijuana crops pushed tens of thousands of subsistence farmers
to the brink of starvation.
Seeing political opportunity in economic collapse, a communist party exploited local grievances,
and persuaded residents that only a violent overthrow of the government would solve their problems.
Nixon's global war on drugs was fueling the communist ideology he was trying to contain.
And we will never surrender our friends to communist aggression.
By the "Just Say No" Reagan-era, drug prohibition had opened new opportunities for corruption
that led all the way to Nepal's royal family.
King Birendra and I have each discovered a new friend.
A blockbuster report by Nepalese journalist, Padam Thakurathi,
implicated the king's brothers in Nepal's booming heroin trade.
The government immediately shut down Thakurathi's newspaper.
Then, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a bodyguard of the royal family entered Thakurathi's home,
and aimed a gun 18 inches from his head.
Shot in the face, Thakurathi survived the attack.
He lost an eye, but lived to expose the royal family's involvement in black-market heroin.
This is a quick escape from grim reality.
Today, Nepal remains a thriving hub for heroin and hashish.
With stories of drug busts, addiction, and violence,
mainstays of Nepal's television news coverage.
By 2006 the Maoists controlled 80% of the country.
The insurgency based in Roma had grown into a national political force
that paralyzed the nation with a series of national strikes and armed resistance to the king.
After a decade-long civil war that claimed 17,000 lives, Nepal's monarchy was abolished,
and the Communists elected to power.
The Maoist have surged ahead past both the mainstream Left Party,
the UML, as well as the Nepali Congress.
Today, Nepal's political situation has calmed down, and Freak Street is looking a little bit lonely.
Katmandu's hippie past is running high on nostalgia and low on foot traffic.
The erstwhile hippie haven is now a hangout for hipsters.
Artisanal coffee shops, outnumber head shops.
And the old Eden hashish Centre is just an ordinary budget hotel.
Despite a small political movement to legalize hashish,
marijuana is legal one day a year,
for religious purposes only.
The rest of the time, tourists and locals take their chances on the black market.
With its wild days behind it Freak Street has mostly dropped the drug trade,
and reinvented itself as a destination for mountain trekking.
These days the real action is in Thamel.
A short walk from Freak Street, Kathmandu's thumping nightlife hotspot
offers visitors every kind of indulgence that was available during Freak Street's heyday,
and many more that the hippies couldn't have imagined on their wildest trip.
And a recent retro hit is reviving Kathmandu's hippy heritage.