Lo Manthang, Kingdom of Lo, Mustang, Nepal. “Shangri-La” is, of course imaginary, the fictional invention of an “earthly paradise” by author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon.

Shangri-La in the minds of millions epitomizes the spiritual serenity and wisdom of the exotic Orient. That’s why the Tibetan Kingdom of Lo with its 600 year-old medieval walled capital city of Lo Manthang in an almost inaccessibly remote region of Nepal called Mustang, on the border with Chinese-occupied Tibet, is so often described as the real, or the last, Shangri-La.

But is it such an earthly paradise that you would want to live here? No. Besides living so utterly isolated from the rest of the world with very few “mod-cons” (modern conveniences of daily life), you’d also be living in that four-letter word that Zero is so full of.

The Lo-pa live with their animals. You might be able to handle sheep pellets, albeit they are in uncountable numbers. The cattle cowpies splattered along every alley in Lo Manthang is another matter. Any walk you take in the ancient walled city is a hopscotch.

Thus the Kingdom of Lo is not Shangri-La. Is there another? One place left on our planet, the Last Shangri-La?

Kathmandu, Nepal. Years ago, Joel Wade and I were here after completing a month-long expedition across the entire Tibetan Plateau and through the Himalayas. We spotted a t-shirt in the bazaar with an embroidered map of the world with the words stitched around it: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been.

That’s the famous refrain of the Grateful Dead’s Truckin’ from 1970, and it was so appropriate for what we had just experienced that of course we each got one.

Being here now sparked that memory, causing me to reflect on how appropriate a description it is for the totally bizarre spasm of masochism America has suffered over the last seven years under Zero. The experience of being here now is, on the other hand, a surprising lesson on how to repair the incredible damage Zero has wrought upon our country.

We’ve had spasms of craziness before – the Hippie 60s come to mind – but nothing like this, where Americans en masse are acquiescing to the murder of their country, willfully placing the perp in the White House not once but twice. Here’s the lesson to learn.