Categorie: heritage
Trilochan Shrestha was a hippie even before the word was invented
Lucia de Vries October 12, 2018
When Nepal became a destination for overland travelers in the 1960s, one young man was ready: Trilochan Shrestha, probably Nepal’s first hippie. Born in 1945 as the oldest son to a wealthy Newar family, he grew up in Jhhochen where his aunt lived.
When yoga teacher William Forbes suffered a serious accident in 1985, some predicted he might never walk again but fate had something else in store for the American iconoclast better known as ‘Swayambu Billy’.Forbes came to Nepal in 1970, and like many of his contemporaries, took the long road to Kathmandu overland on the hippie trail. The young adventurer flew to Luxembourg, where he bought a Volkswagen van, crashed it in Morocco and continued by local buses, travelling through Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. His wife, Susan Burns followed a few years later. Lees verder