This is an extraordinary case study of how the exoticism of people and place can end up shaping a country's self-identity as well as how it is perceived on the international stage. If you are looking for a textbook study of fluidity in tourism branding and promotion, and in particular how they change in response to external factors, this book ... Read moremeets that mark well.
South Asia Research Liechty masterfully untangles colorful skeins of stories surrounding the fabled countercultural draw of young Westerners to Nepal. He follows threads backward to Nepal's history and the nineteenth-century Western fascination with Himalayan mysteries; outwards to geopolitical transformations enabling mass travel in the mid-twentieth century; and forward to the responses of Nepalis through transformed youth culture, tourist infrastructure, literary accounts, and reminiscences. Far Out spins a many-stranded cultural history of encounter.
Kirin Narayan, author of My Family and Other Saints Far Out is a wonderful book. Part cultural history, part urban anthropology, it provides a deep and rich account of the changing contours of the East-West encounter in legendary Kathmandu over much of the twentieth century. This book will change skeptics' minds about the serious intellectual value of tourism studies.
Sherry Ortner, University of California, Los Angeles Show Less