The "Age of Hippies": Nepalis Make Sense of Budget Tourists in the 1960s and 70s
- Mark LiechtyDetails
Abstract
What did hippies mean to their Nepali hosts? What did it mean for local people to live among and interact with Western youth, many of whom used the relative freedom of Nepal to cast off just about every social inhibition (sartorial, sexual, and legal) that weighed on them back home? What was it like to live among some of the most freakish "freaks" the Western countercultural scene ever produced? This talk examines the kinds of interactions that Nepalis had with young foreigners in the 1960s and 70s, how Nepalis explained what they saw, and the kinds of impacts that budget tourism had on local people and the city itself. In public debate but also in music, literature, poetry, food, and fashion, Nepalis embraced, rejected, and adapted the hippie ethos.