Getting High In Nepal

Back in the 60's hippies flocked to Kathmandu to get high, since Nepal had few laws against the use of drugs. They hung out on Jochen Tole, renamed  Freak Street, near Durbar Square and it grew to look like San Francisco's Haight-Ashberry district: ultra-cheap lodgings, cool restaurants, and lots of chocolate cake. 

Today we've learned that the Nepal government's cabinet will get high, too, but in another way. Yesterday it met in the Mt. Everest region in the town of Lukla (elevation 9,000 feet), and plans to helicopter up to Kalapathar for today's brief meeting at 17,000 feet.

The cabinet meeting is dubbed "the highest ever," and its purpose, as reported in Huffington Post, is "to highlight the threat global warming poses to Himalayan glaciers.The meeting comes ahead of an international climate change conference beginning next week in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is meant to draw attention to the effects climate change is having on the region surrounding the world's highest peak...Scientists say the Himalayas' glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating lakes whose walls could burst and flood villages below. Melting ice and snow also make the routes for mountaineers less stable and more difficult to follow." --Jerry in Nepal