“I was born on this street in 1956, in this house,” Prakash Ratna Shakya recounts, proudly showing off the traditional Nepali masks he sells in his small shop, the Tibetan Mask Center.
“Growing up, I had many foreign friends who stayed in the cheap lodges around here. At night, the hippies used to sit in the street, it was very dark back then, and smoke hashish. The police used to walk by, but they left them alone.”
In the early 1960s, western hippies traveled overland from Europe to Nepal, seeking alternatives to Western consumer culture.
Many stayed in cheap flop houses on a narrow road south of Kathmandu‘s historic Durbar Square. While locals call the area Jhochhen, the main strip became known as Freak Street, for its transient population of unusual and disheveled travelers.
At the time, hashish and marijuana, long an essential part of Nepali Hindu culture, were legal and tempted itinerant travelers and pioneering tourists to linger in numerous stalls and cake shops.
“My father had two taxis, and when I was 14 years old, I used to take the keys and drive around. We used to listen to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and Light My Fire by The Doors on my cassette player,” Shakya remembers fondly.
“The local people, especially us youngsters, were very happy to have these Westerners visiting. I had long hair back then, just like my foreign friends. In the 70s, some of the hippies began to arrive in cars, mostly Renaults and Citroens. I used to buy them for $200 and then resell them for $400 or $500. Then I didn’t have to work until the money ran out and I just hung out. In those days, we didn’t even need a driving license.”
But the free-wheeling vibes were not to last. Nepal made hashish illegal under pressure from the US government, fighting a war in Vietnam and worried that its youth would shirk military service and go to seed. Consequently, some of the young visitors were arrested and deported to India.
Shakya suggests that this did not have an immediate effect, “Even though smoking hashish was illegal by the time I turned 20, the police left us alone. We used to sit in the Snow Man restaurant and drink one black tea because we had no money.”
The area also attracted its fair share of criminals, including the infamous serial killer Charles Sobhraj who preyed on young travelers. Sobhraj murdered at least two young hippies in December 1975, left their partially burned bodies in a field near Bhaktapur and escaped the country before he could be arrested.
For reasons unknown, Sobhraj returned to Nepal in 2003, was recognized by a journalist, arrested and convicted on the strength of a signature in a guest house ledger, to serve 20 years in Kathmandu’s Central Jail, a few minutes walk from Freak Street, until his release and deportation to France in December 2022.
Shakya recalls, “Sobhraj stayed in Oriental Lodge back then. Local people still talk about him today.”
Back in 2003, before Sobhraj’s conviction, Panchar Kumar Chhetri, a 73-year-old retired policeman who investigated the original murder case in 1975, told me, “Charles Sobhraj is clever, and he will try and twist any case.
We suspected him in 1975 after he had entered the country with the passport of a man he had murdered in Thailand, but the police then made a huge mistake. We asked Mr Sobhraj for an interview after gathering evidence. Hours later several officers broke into his hotel room. Sobhraj had gone.”
The revolution in Iran effectively stopped the overland hippie trail. For many years, Freak Street was no more than a name, but since 2015, following a devastating earthquake, a new generation of young entrepreneurs started renting and restoring the old houses along the strip.
While the Nepali capital’s main tourist ghetto Thamel has become ever more crowded and expensive, budget accommodation and hip cafes are making a comeback on Freak Street. Bright restaurants, their walls lined with vintage photos of the erstwhile pioneers, serve tea and momos (Nepalese dumplings).
“The whole street was owned by Newari people. They have all moved out and are renting their old houses. I don’t know anyone here these days. Only the Snow Man is still here,” Shakya says.
The Snow Man is one of the very last remnants of the hippie heydays still open today, run by the son of the original owner. The walls of this dark and dingy establishment are covered in graffiti, but the hippies sipping lemon soda are gone. Instead, a new generation of young Nepali reprobates now hangs out here and indulges in apple pie and soft drinks.
“These days, the police will make a lot of hassle if you smoke,” Shakya concludes. “But some of the old hippies, now respectable people, come back with their children to show them where they used to hang out when they were young. They come to my shop and ask me where the old lodges and tea stalls used to be. But the old freedom is gone. I miss those days of course, but I am with my family, and I am very happy.”