Back then, glassy-eyed travellers would shamble along the city's streets and alleyways, encircled in a fuzz of marijuana smoke and a blur of opiate haze. Music wafted from balconies and crash pads, strains of Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
On arrival, nearly all made their way to Freak Street - the first step on the stoned stairway to heaven. Freak Street was a commotion of restaurants, mystic bookshops and vendors keeping up a steady litany: `My friend! Change money, buy hash, you want ganja, acid, smack...'.
If drugs weren't foisted on you, they were advertised on signs with improbably alliterative names such as Himalayan Hashish House and Smack Shangri-La Style. Scoring drugs was easy. Sharing them was fun.
But times duly changed. First, drugs were banned by the government. Then the hippies were flushed out and the price of visas raised. Freak Street fell away, and was replaced by Thamel - sensible, clean and full of chic cafés - as the favourite gathering place for travellers.
These days, people come to trek, not trip, their heads spinning with Nirvana the band, not the mind expansion. Of course, drugs still remain, only now most of the addicts aren't dressed in waistcoats and beads - they're Nepalese.
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