"No", Paul went on, "a good country to go to for your first big expedition - so to speak - would be Nepal. What do you think, Nathalie?" "Oh yes! That would be perfect!" she replied enthusiastically. "We flew there for a few days when we were in India and stayed in Kathmandu and Darjeeling. I loved it. Just midway between the extremes." A series of clichés passed in front of my mind's eye: Mount Everest, the Annapurna, the paradise of the hippies in the seventies, the fierce Gurkhas of the British Army. This was not enough to form an opinion of that country. And definitely not enough to motivate me. When a bookish student follows his friends' advice and embarks on a journey to far-off Nepal, things are bound not to go according to plan. Etienne Livingstone offers here more than a voyage of self - discovery. He gives us a perceptive glimpse of what was, until very recently, the last Hindu kingdom on Earth
