This exoticness comes about because the country was virtually closed to Europeans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nepalšs otherness became an even scarcer commodity starting after World War II. The 1960s fascination with the exotic coincided neatly with the "opening" of Nepal (Liechy 1996; Shapard 1985, 33). For the thousands of travelers who followed the overland route in the 1960s and 1970s, Kathmandušs ornate "non-Western" and densely populated capital seemed "not only of another time but of another world" (Shepard 1985, 33).