I'm a writer and journalist with an eye on South and Southeast Asia. I first visited Nepal in the mid-90s, traveled around extensively, and have returned regularly since. Climbing Gokyo Peak, then crossing the Ngozumpa glacier and the Cho La pass in a storm, was the kind of trip I’m glad to have survived unscathed. I covered the civil war, the plight of Tibetan refugees, and Chinese Belt and Road infrastructure projects. I sat down for an interview with serial killer Charles Sobhraj, subject of the BBC/Netflix series The Serpent and I survived and reported on the 2015 earthquake. I spoke to several travelers who followed the hippie trail from London to Kathmandu in the 60s and early 70s, whose accounts inform the basis of my novel.
I wrote...
The Devil's Road To Kathmandu
By
Tom Vater
What is my book about?
The Devil’s Road To Kathmandu is a tense, fast-paced, and kaleidoscopic pulp thriller, following the lives of two generations of drifters embroiled in a saga of sex, drugs, and murder on the road between London and the Indian subcontinent.
In 1976, four friends drive a bus along the hippy trail from London to Kathmandu. En Route in Pakistan, a drug deal goes badly wrong, yet the boys escape with their lives and the narcotics. Thousands of kilometers, numerous acid trips, accidents, nightclubs, and even a pair of beautiful Siamese twins later, as they finally reach the counter-culture capital of the world, Kathmandu, one of them disappears with the drug money. A quarter-century later, after receiving mysterious emails inviting them to pick up their share of the money, the remaining three companions are back in Kathmandu, trying to solve a 25-year old mystery that leads them to a dramatic showdown with their past.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Tiger for Breakfast
By
Michel Peissel
Why this book?
Tiger for Breakfast is the illustrious story of a Russian adventurer and nightclub owner, traveler Boris Lissanevitch who opened the first hotel in Kathmandu in 1950. Boris also opened the first mixed-race nightclub in Calcutta and had the first car carried across the Himalayas from India to Kathmandu. His guest list proved remarkable too. Edmund Hillary set off from the Royal Hotel for Everest in 1953 and numerous royals stayed, including Queen Elizabeth. For better or for worse, Boris was a catalyst for the outside world to make inroads into the Himalayan kingdom and Michel Peissel’s book does a great job evoking those early days of travel and exploration on the Roof of the World.
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The Snow Leopard
By
Peter Matthiessen
Why this book?
Writer, explorer, Zen monk, and erstwhile CIA agent Peter Matthiessen’s best work is fiction, but The Snow Leopard, an account of the author’s travels in search of the Himalayan blue sheep in 1973, remains a Nepal nonfiction classic and is a great introduction to the work of foreign writers focusing on the country. Embarking on this expedition in the wake of his wife’s death, Matthiessen weaves his personal journey into observations of the mountains with an eye on Buddhist precepts and the hope to encounter the very rare snow leopard.
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Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
By
Jon Krakauer
Why this book?
Hair-raisingly suspenseful, tragic and insane, Into Thin Air is the nonfiction account of journalist’s Jon Krakauer ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, for a magazine assignment that was to turn into one of the most serious disaster’s in the world’s tallest mountain’s history. The book asks some hard questions about commercialising the climbing of the mountain (and by extension, commercialising anything) and Krakauer takes a long hard look at his own actions on the deadly slopes of Everest and lays out what happens when people who are only connected by money face peril. This is a brilliantly researched book that manages to draw the reader in and keep her/him on the edge of their seat throughout. Riveting.
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Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far-East
By
Pico Iyer
Why this book?
Only one segment of this travel classic is about Nepal, but Pico Iyer’s exploration of 1980s South and Southeast Asia throws a candid eye on a rapidly globalising world. Before social media and smartphones, foreign travelers and locals talked to one another and the results make for illuminating and elegant reading about the Lonely Planet generation and how it was received and perceived in the Far East.
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Kathmandu
By
Thomas Bell
Why this book?
Planning on a trip to Kathmandu? Curious about what makes one of the world’s most fascinating cities tick? Thomas Bell’s 2016 account is the perfect and most concise introduction to the history, culture, religiosity, and recent changes of the capital on the roof of the world. Bell confidently unravels the intricate interplay of caste, tradition, and rigid hierarchy on the one hand, and modernization, tearing into a city that was virtually isolated until 1950 like a bullet train, on the other. Perhaps it’s time for a Nepali writer to publish a panoramic nonfiction view of one of the world’s most fascinating cities, but in the meantime, Bells’ Kathmandu sets the bar high.
