[2] After passing the bar, Nichols practiced law in the San Francisco area for over 50 years specializing in business, banking, finance, and non-profit companies.

During his tenure as president of SFUSD he was named respondent in the landmark 1974 civil rights case Lau v. Nichols, where the Supreme Court found for the students.

Among these, in 1978 when China opened the Tibet Autonomous Region for tourism he was the first Westerner to have permission to make pilgrimages to the sacred Tibetan sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar.

He has bicycled the entire 10,300 miles of the Silk Road from Istanbul to Xi’an, a journey completed in four legs beginning in 1989 and concluding in 2005.

[5][6] In 2010 and 2012 he was the first to lead expeditions into little traveled areas of Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and China in search of the tomb of the great Mongol emperor Genghis Khan.