Katmandu’s Freak Street, Now Devoid of Its Freaks, Just Isn’t What It Used to Be

However you look at it, Freak Street is not what it used to be.

The crowded, dusty thoroughfare in downtown Katmandu that drew thousands of hippies looking for love, peace and an alternative life style--not to mention freely available drugs--in the 1960s and ‘70s, is once again just another Nepalese back street.

The cafes and bars that specialized in food and drink with a side order of hashish have either closed or gone straight. Aunt Jane’s, once a landmark for the barefoot hippie brigade, is now New Aunt Jane’s and concentrates on vegetarian food.

The Snowman Cafe is closed and shuttered. The Oasis serves beer.

Hippie Legions Gone

Gone are the legions of scruffy youngsters from Europe, Australia and the United States, wearing love beads, their scruffy long hair making it hard to identify their sex.

Now the visitor spends his time fending off polite, softly spoken but insistent Nepalese men, whose main aim is to buy hard foreign currency at black market rates.

Taxi and pedicab drivers, who once reacted instantly when asked for a ride to Freak Street, now look blankly. The street doesn’t even have a Nepalese name.

Occasionally, like the sighting of a rare species of wildlife, a hippie can be spotted.

Leftover From ‘70s

Erik, a Dane in his late 30s, sits barefoot in the dust, his maroon cotton clothing hanging off his spare frame. His filthy blond hair is dragged back into a ponytail, and his sunburned face is a mass of sores and blisters, the result of a poor diet.

“I’m happy here. Why change?” he said, offering a tourist one of the bamboo flutes he sells to make ends meet.

But Erik, who says he thinks he arrived in the mid-1970s, is in the minority.

These days the tourists in Katmandu are more likely to be young, well-off professionals, dressed carefully in designer casual clothes and well-versed in Nepal’s traditions and history.

Yuppie Invasion

One U.S.-published guidebook carries the chapter heading “Interfacing with Nepal,” a sure sign that the yuppie invasion is well under way.

The hippies that are left now live quietly in Pokhara, a lakeside town 125 miles west of the capital with superb views of the Annapurna range of mountains in the Himalayas.

Drugs have become a major problem in Nepal, and the government introduced legislation a year ago that was a factor leading to the gradual decline in numbers of those seeking an alternative life style.

“We didn’t have regulations before,” newly appointed Minister for Tourism Mohammad Mohsin said. “The use of drugs was something personal. But now our young people have become infected with this habit. We had to take action.

“Of course, drugs are partly a media-created problem.”

Visitors arriving at Katmandu’s rickety Tribhuvan Airport now have to show visible proof of their ability to support themselves, and customs searches have become more rigorous.

One of Mohsin’s first priorities will be to oversee the implementation of a multimillion-dollar program aimed at boosting tourism in Nepal.