From the halcyon days of easily accessible drugs to years of government intervention and a surging black market, this tale chronicles a former drug smuggler’s 50-year career in the drug trade, its evolution into a multibillion-dollar business, and the characters he met along the way. The journey begins with the infamous Hippie Hash trail that led from London and Amsterdam overland to Nepal where, prior to the early1970s, hashish was legal and smoked freely in Nepal, India, Afghanistan, and Laos; marijuana and opium were sold openly in Hindu temples in India and much of Asia; and cannabis was widely cultivated in Nepal and Afghanistan for use in food, medicine, and cloth. In documenting the stark contrasts of the ensuing years, the narrative examines the impact of the financial incentives awarded by international institutions such as the U.S. government to outlaw the cultivation of cannabis in Nepal and Afghanistan and to make hashish and opium illegal in Turkey—the demise of the U.S. “good old boy” dope network, the eruption of a violent criminal society, and the birth of a global black market for hard drugs—as well as the schemes smugglers employed to get around customs agents and various regulations.

Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva, 1945-2001, former king of Nepal,

On June 1, 2001, the heir to the Nepalese throne, Crown Prince Dipendra, donned military fatigues, armed himself with automatic weapons, walked in on a quiet family gathering, and, without a word, mowed his family down before turning a gun on himself. But Dipendra did not die immediately, and while lying in a coma was declared king. He was now a living god. Award-winning journalists Amy Willesee and Mark Whittaker set out to understand what could have led to such a devastating tragedy, one that fascinated and appalled the world. Exploring Kathmandu and other parts of the kingdom, they conducted exhaustive interviews with everyone from Maoist guerillas to members and friends of the royal family, gaining insight into the people involved in and the events behind the massacre. At the heart of the story is the love affair between Dipendra and the beautiful aristocrat Devyani Rana, whom he was forbidden to marry. Culminating their portrait of Nepal is a chilling reconstruction of the events of that fatal day. As conspiracy theories circulate and rebels threaten to topple the monarchy, the future of this small Himalayan kingdom promises to be as tumultuous as its past. Revealing a country where the twenty-first century mingles uneasily with the fourteenth, Love and Death in Kathmandu is both an enlightening portrait of a place that is a world apart and a riveting investigation of an incredible crime.

This work provides a portrait of Nepal's doom-laden royal dynasty from its staggering expansion in the 18th century to the massacre in June 2001 - a sequence of events worthy of a Greek tragedy. Nepal, a fabulous country of sublime natural beauty, has a history inextricably mixed with kingship. There have been kings in its mountain valleys for millennia. Buddha Siddharta was born a Nepalese prince and the current dynasty traces its ancestry to the Rajput princes from Rajasthan. Nepal is the last Hindu kingdom in the world, in which the same traditions of kingship are practised now as in Vedic times. Kings are gods, and history, kingship and myth are culturally woven together. The current Shah dynasty created modern Nepal and was the complete focus of national identity.

Relying on access to exclusive information, AP correspondent Neelesh Misra pieces together the jigsaw of sometimes conflicting accounts of the murders of the Neplaese royal family on June 1, 2001. A wider national tragedy stands revealed: a nation with one foot in the 16th century and the other, uncomfortably, in the 21st; and of a king whose grand plans for making that transition a smooth one would, in more ways than one, be brutally thwarted.

With unique access, Gregson has written a stunning investigative account--an intimate glimpse into a troubled monarchy and Nepal, a nation in turmoil. photos.