I'm going in September, pretty excited. I'd really love to hear some first hand experiences.

Why, what's there?

It's where the two largest populations on earth meet. It's where Buddhism and Hindu infuse into a single culture. It has monks, temples and heaps of wildlife. It has the Himalayas. I'm touring the country by motorbike.

Also it has weed as weeds. They're naturally occurring. Plus an enormous abundance of LSD since it's got a huge population of hippies.

Still, so much culture and history. If I still have some money left by the end of my trip I'm go to Heli-board one of the more skiable mountains in the Himalayas.

Answer your question?

Yes, it does actually ;)



How can they afford (or afford to make) LSD, I mean don't they jus live of the land and not work or anything?

I don't really know, I'll ask the hippies when I get there. A lot of them do live off the land, but lots of people also deal with the tourism industry (which is huge there). I'm assuming it'd be easy as shit to smuggle in vials of LSD, or books full of blotter.

Government has a communist uprising on it's hands, customs there is pretty relaxed.

In that case Nepal ftw :cool:


To be honest I can't actualy imagine a better place to trip.

Oh dear, this is what happens when you hand out usernames to randoms :rolleyes:

I don't really know, I'll ask the hippies when I get there. A lot of them do live off the land, but lots of people also deal with the tourism industry (which is huge there). I'm assuming it'd be easy as shit to smuggle in vials of LSD, or books full of blotter.

Government has a communist uprising on it's hands, customs there is pretty relaxed.

What about the customs of the country you're leaving?

It's the country where the daily life of the tribes in many of the villages is still quite close to that of the middle ages. It's the country where walking is not done for pleasure but for basic transport because most of Nepal is still without roads and vehicles.

And the nature and the isolation is what makes Nepal a Mekka for trekkers. Few westerners, who have made a real trek in the mountains of Nepal, return to their home country without being deeply influenced by the strong impressions you get out there. The hippies were among the first foreigners to discover the magic attractions of Nepal in the sixties when they were virtually the only tourists in the country.

Since then, the number of visitors has grown to enormous quantities. In 1952 there were 562 tourists, in 1964 the number had grown to about 10.000, in 1968 there were more than 20.000, and today, the tourism has almost exploded. Kathmandu HAS become a modern town with all the good and bad consequences of that, but the Kathmandu valley itself and the old part of the town are absolutely worth visiting. And the mountains of Nepal with its hundreds of villages and numerous tribes and languages will still keep their peace and tranquility for many many years.

Several months after my return, I lost interest in most of the ordinary, daily events, and to me, the only interesting subjects were Nepal, India and the Himalayas. Small pieces from my experience turned up all the time and kept playing in my mind like film strips: The ringing bells from the yak caravans on the trails of the Himalayas, the religious music from the mountains of Nepal, the smell of incense in the temples and the monasteries, the whistle of the gigantic, Indian steam locomotives, the heavy noise from the trains crossing the iron bridges of northern India, and several others. -pics and more of this first hand account here>>

http://www.ponty.dk/hippietr.htm

Sounds awesome, definitely wanna take the Hippie Trail one day, good luck.

hm, as with any foreign country there is one general rule. Find out what kinds of cigarttes they dont have there and are crazy for. Buy cartons and cartons and use them like money or trade for drugs. IE Seoul, South Korea=camel #9 non menthol

Climb everest or you fail.

I've been to Tibet, and Nepal sounds pretty similar. Tibet was awesome, I may have to start looking at Nepal as my next possible destination...

Tibet was awesome

MOAR!:mad:

I am in Kathmandu at the moment...

Been in Nepal about three and a half weeks now, and I leave tomorrow. God knows why i'm on fucking totse.....

Anyway... I climbed up to ABC, Anapurna Base Camp, which is 4200m, and was... fucking awesome (i was the ONLY tourist up there for about 3 hours, i think practically no one can say that....). You're going for the end of the monsoon, so hopefully it'll be not so rainy, and great visibility. With that however, comes an increase in tourists, and less discounts (but of course, it's still cheap...).

Nepal is a seriously AMAZING country, and i'm fucking in love with this place. It's going to be hard to leave. Not seen any LSD around, although there's plenty of feral posers, and real hippies, so who knows. Pharmacuticals don't exactly need a prescription though... and it's true about the pot, it grows everywhere, and the hashish is really fucking good, blows ALL weed outa the water.

If you come here, you'll just love most of the people, they're seriously friendly and sympathetic, but all the bunch who came by land say it's more chilled and relaxed than India. I am definitely coming back here. If you're biking, holy shit, you have no idea how rewarding that will be, BUT the traffic is fucking insane in the Kathmandu valley, and it's pretty horrendously polluted here (think black boggies, yum!) and hectic, so you gota watch out.

The religion, culture, history, language, people..... damn man, you'll have a field day, it's all here. I was in Cambodia and Australia before Nepal, and as much as I liked them (and as different as they are....) I think Nepal is my favourite place. Serene just about sums it up.

You have to go to Pokrah and stay by the lake, and do at least one trekk, oh and get smashed on rum and wander around kathmandu thinking you're imagining the cows in the road. Boooyaaaa. I'll update with more shit another time, if you're still interested.

Oh, political situation - the Maoists won the election, they're no longer insurgents, and there's peace, generally. Big problems with fuel and stuff though, some murders and violence, but generally what the U.S is saying about "don't travel" is a pile of wank designed to keep the timid inside the States, shopping at Wallmart and hating their lives. Nepal is perhaps the safest place i've been. That said, it's unpredictable, and violence does flare up, plus the government's still being sorted out (they just kicked the king out too...) and everything is very much up in the air at the moment. No one has anything against tourists though, and with a bit of luck things will get better and better here.

I'm back in the U.K now, after being in Nepal for about 4 weeks.... and shit, was today fucking crazy.

It turned out pretty quickly after I got a taxi towards the airport, that people were out doing the commotion locomotion (again...... whole city shut down from a strike when i arrived, too), but the word didn't seem to have fully spread. The result of this was of course.... most of the taxi drivers had shut down most of the city, with a sluggish crawl of thousands of bikes and cars, vans and taxis all over the place, and total nuts congestion.

Shit. I was kinda worried..... we ended up getting quite far and then some dude came over and fucking yoinked the key out of the ignition of the car. I was properly pissed off (for the first time in months) and worried i'd miss my flight, so I screamed at him "PUT THAT FUCKING KEY RIGHT BACK IN THE FUCKING CAR, RIGHT NOW, AND FUCK OFF, I HAVE TO CATCH A FLIGHT". Yeh..... shit, not exactly scary, more embarrassing for them - crazy pissed off white kids yelling make south asians uncomfortable, but these nobs gave the key back at least.

There were a couple more roadblocks I managed to get through by yelling, swearing and smiling/begging, but eventually these dudes had parked their vans across the road and there was no way through at all, so I had to jump out and just run for it with my bags.... up this slope in the heat. Mainly I think the taxi dudes were pissed off about the price of fuel, which had risen to 2 dollars a litre (and Americans/Europeans think they're being ripped off?!) but I wasn't too fussed by this point, being stressed and tired and thoroughly annoyed with the taxi maffias....

Oh well, I got there just about in time, even though they moved my flight forward by 45 minutes, I had to go through security twice as the ATM is for some reason outside the airport, and you are obliged to pay departure tax, heh... yeh. I managed to hoof it onto the plane with one of the last buses, after stocking up on cheap rum, and then it was off to Bahrain to change for Heathrow, accompanied by crazy Saudis drinking whisky at 9am. Oh, Bahrain being Bahrain, one of the main attractions of the duty free was a "designer burka/hijab" stall! Fucking awesome man - custom silver stripes, fap fap fap!

....Holy shit i'm jet-lagged. What a crazy day.

Plus an enormous abundance of LSD since it's got a huge population of hippies.

If you bring back some LSD and mail me some I will pay you full price. Nobody checks either; proof: http://www.totse.com/community/showpost.php?p=8914582&postcount=8

So?

I don't know if smuggling ANYTHING illegal out of Nepal is that great of an idea... They have some of the most AWFUL prison conditions in the world, and you're pretty fucked if you get stuck in one. We're talking <500 calories a day, and a lepper as your best friend. I don't know if any of you all have seen those shows on history channel about getting stuck in a foreign prison, but the ones about Nepal are the worst. The guy who wrote "The Descent" (recent horror film), Jeff Long, actually spent time in one, and after reading his books I definitely don't want to go to one.

I'm too lazy to provide links, but just do a little research.

To those who have traveled there/are going to travel there for sure, are there any good websites or books that I could read? I would love to travel there. Also, could someone give me an idea of how much a trip from the States would cost? It's a little overwhelming thinking of traveling across the world, especially into a semi-third world country. If you have a spare minute, a PM to exchange email addresses would be great.

I don't know if smuggling ANYTHING illegal out of Nepal is that great of an idea... They have some of the most AWFUL prison conditions in the world, and you're pretty fucked if you get stuck in one. We're talking <500 calories a day, and a lepper as your best friend. I don't know if any of you all have seen those shows on history channel about getting stuck in a foreign prison, but the ones about Nepal are the worst. The guy who wrote "The Descent" (recent horror film), Jeff Long, actually spent time in one, and after reading his books I definitely don't want to go to one.

You're thinking wrong. It's not about the consequences; it's about the chances of getting caught. LSD is odorless, cannot be detected by dogs, and blotter fits easily in a pocketbook. The prisons do sound scary, but I really doubt the chances are high that one could get caught.

You're thinking wrong. It's not about the consequences; it's about the chances of getting caught. LSD is odorless, cannot be detected by dogs, and blotter fits easily in a pocketbook. The prisons do sound scary, but I really doubt the chances are high that one could get caught.

Bollocks to that. Not that LSD is around in Nepal much anyway, this is just someone's daydream - if it is, it's only certain people. It's true, smuggling LSD is easier than some things; i met this French guy who used to sell it in Goa from Cali, but you'd have to be a fucking TOOL to think you'd never ever risk getting caught.

Just because dogs can't smell it...... what if customs just looks through your bag? No one wants to end up in jail for that, and you can't always pay a bribe in somewhere like an airport! The hashish and opium are available plenty in Nepal though, plus benzos and probably ketamine from pharmacies. Mountains > that, though.

There were a couple more roadblocks I managed to get through by yelling, swearing and smiling/begging, but eventually these dudes had parked their vans across the road and there was no way through at all, so I had to jump out and just run for it with my bags.... up this slope in the heat.

Dude, that is an AWESOME story. Was the purpose of the trip just sight-seeing and whatnot? Did you get a good deal on the flight and everything? Travel costs are crazy nowadays.

MOAR!:mad:

I was there for two and a half weeks last May with a study abroad class from the University of Southern Mississippi. It was possibly the most insanely cool two and a half weeks of my life. We went to all kinds of monasteries, temples, and holy sites, my professor and I got invited in for tea by a hermit monk at Drak Yerpa!

I won't hijack this guy's thread by giving a blow-by-blow account. Maybe I'll talk it up in another thread later. I've got some awesome photos.

We went to all kinds of monasteries, temples, and holy sites, my professor and I got invited in for tea by a hermit monk at Drak Yerpa!

I won't hijack this guy's thread by giving a blow-by-blow account. Maybe I'll talk it up in another thread later. I've got some awesome photos.

Nah man, please feel free. Your stories sound awesome.

I've had to set my travels back because of other things I'm doing before September (New Zealand/SE asia), so I want to do it very early in 2009 (just after the New Years).

There's this program I want to do. I'd volunteer for 1 month in a rural orphanage. Learn the customs, the language, do some good, then I'd go hike/motorbike until my money runs out and come back home. With the added advantages of knowing some of the language.