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For independent travelers just now beginning to travel in Asia, the legendary overland “Hippie Trail” of the ’60s and ’70s is a natural source of fascination and envy. Unlike today’s Lonely Planet-toting backpackers, the counterculture wanderers of the hippie era pioneered their Asian routes by word-of-mouth and trial-and-error. Hence, in indie travel terms, Hippie Trail travelers are to present day backpackers what the Ancient Greeks were to the Ancient Romans: larger-than-life legends, who once wandered a wilder world.
Legends can exaggerate, however — and that’s why it’s nice to have a book like David Tomory’s A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu, an oral history that sheds a personal, realistic light on the Hippie Trail. In interviewing 35 people who once wandered the roads between Istanbul and Kathmandu, Tomory reveals the complexities within the travel culture of this era. After all, the Hippie Trail wasn’t the first independent travel phenomenon in modern Asia; it was the first mass independent travel phenomenon in modern Asia. And, like any mass movement, the Hippie Trail was defined as much by its reputation as its reality.
Thus, while hippie-era wanderers were creative, intrepid pioneers in a certain sense, they also tended to be petty, competitive, self-ghettoizing, and self-deluding. In short, they had the same charms and weaknesses as any self-conscious, authenticity-seeking counterculture movement of the last half-century — including the travel-hipsters of today. Behind the pretensions of the “movement”, however, were real travelers, having private, inspiring, life-changing experiences — and that’s what Tomory’s book best reveals.
Before I get into the narrative details of A Season in Heaven, I might point out that the book represents a purely Western-slanted look at the Hippie Trail. Asian locals at the time — while friendly enough — were not known to have been terribly impressed with hippie seekers: Indian writer Gita Mehta has referred to the Hippie Trail as “that long line of loonies”, and V.S. Naipaul wrote off hippie fascination with Hinduism as a “sentimental wallow”. Western expatriates and Asia-experts living along the Hippie Trail at the time were just as sardonic — and the New York Times had reported as early as 1968 that “Laos has grown disenchanted with the flower power folk, Thailand will not let them in without a haircut, and Japan now requires a bond of $250 as proof of financial stability.”
Thus, in interviewing only the Westerners who took part in the Hippie Trail, Tomory’s account is more of a nostalgic dialogue amongst middle-class travelers than it is a balanced social history of the movement. Still, it vividly captures the mindset of the young people who dropped all in the ’60s and ’70 to optimistically wander across Asia.
Much like travelers today, the motivation for Hippie Trail wanderers was the allure of exotic countries (Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal) and the opportunity to get away from the politicized environment of home. Unlike current travelers, there wasn’t much practical information available about Asia, or what to do when you got there. One of Tomory’s interview subjects journeyed off from England under the impression that in India “you could live in the forest, eat berries, meditate in a cave, wander around naked or do whatever you felt like and nobody would take a blind bit of notice because everyone innately understood what you were doing.” With expectations like this, it’s no wonder that the people of India were baffled and bewildered by their young Western guests.
Though the quest for Eastern spirituality is a big part of the Hippie Trail myth, Tomory writes that the movement was more about seeking freedom from the moral and social restraints of home. True to the rock-n-roll ethos of the time, the presumed availability of sex and drugs in Asia was a big travel motivation — and this naturally lent to the hipster allure. “It you were really hip — it was like being the first to wear a minidress — you went to India,” recalls one German interviewee.
With the hipster reputation, of course, came hipster pretensions. “In Kabul you saw all the people on their way back from India,” reports traveler Carmel Lyons. “The fashion was prayer shawls, the whole look, pyjamas and beads and drifting fabrics and waistcoats and bare feet and harem pants. And god, they were arrogant.”
The root of arrogance, it seems, was often money — the lack of which was seen as a sign of true travel experience and virtue. Naturally, this attitude ignored the fact that relative economic prosperity in the West was what enabled all those temporarily jobless young people to travel in the first place. Thus, Tomory notes, the Hippie Trail travelers who had money pretended not to, and legends abounded as to how cheaply one could wander across Asia. One storied Englishman is said to have hitched from Damascus to Delhi on just $6. In theory this was indeed a remarkable feat, though it infers that people happily exploited Asian hospitality in order to facilitate subcultural pissing contests. (After all, that storied hitchhiker could well have stayed an extra month in England washing dishes and traveled from Damascus to Delhi in a way that benefited local bus drivers and restaurant owners).
At the root of this traveler onedownsmanship lurked the fact that Hippie Trail travel was unavoidably difficult; dangers and sickness abounded (“Ah, Kabul,” one traveler remembers people bragging, “that’s where you found the real dysentery”). Unlike the travelers of today, travelers had to carry all their cash with them at once, and they often languished for months in flophouse hotels waiting for money transfers to come through. News from home was hard to come by, and travelers’ families often gave them up for dead (at times — far more often then than now — travelers did wind up dead). According to one of Tomory’s respondents, travelers had to contend with “traffic accidents, robbers, corrupt officials, bisexual rapists, filthy quarantine camps, Russian cholera vaccine, loss of sanity and, of course, their own penury.”
By comparison, today’s travelers — warned, wired, and ATM-ready — have it easy. Still, it would be an exaggeration to say (as many veterans of the era do) that the hippie epoch was peopled by purer, nobler travelers than we see today. Like present-day backpackers, Hippie Trail wanderers frequently stuck to traveler ghettos — often the same hotels in the same cities: Gulhane or Yener’s in Istanbul; Amir Kabir in Teheran; the whatsisname in Kabul; the Crown in Delhi; the Modern Lodge in Calcutta; the Matchbox and the Hotchpotch in Kathmandu. “Every city of the route had a budget foreigner quarter,” writes Tomory, “and everyone passed [hotel] names to everyone else.” Indeed, as exotic as the scenery was, the Hippie Trail was often a static succession of dorms, drugs, and familiar faces.
Moreover Asia may not have been in the grips of globalization during the ’60s and ’70s — but there is ample evidence that the young travelers of that era were the ones who first introduced it. By the early seventies, Bollywood had produced a hippie-themed Indian musical called Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, and travelers were reporting Jimi Hendrix-style Afro wigs for sale in the furrier’s market of Kabul. (And, for all the disdain heaped upon the pizza-n-burger menus of today’s Asian guesthouses, the anomaly of Western food in Eastern settings may well trace its origin to the likes of Siggi’s Restaurant in Kabul, which served schnitzel and potato salad for homesick hippie palates.)
Ultimately, then, Tomory’s book reveals that the Hippie Trail was not the stuff of legends, but of normal, curious, intrepid people who were making do within the travel conditions of their time. Asia has certainly changed a lot in the years since then — as has the technology that helps us travel there — but the discoveries it offers are still found on a personal level, apart from the labels that attempt to define the experience.
July 3rd, 2003 at 11:16 am
fascinating post, rolf. thanks.
July 8th, 2003 at 8:58 pm
What?
No ATM’s, no Internet cafes, no Lonely Planet guidebooks?
Yep. ‘Tis all true. I stayed in Yener’s in Istanbul in 1974 but moved over to the Gunger; it was only 65 cents a day!
But I was not traveling for spritual enlightenment, I was only looking for cheap hash.
Ah, to be 18 again…(sigh)
July 10th, 2003 at 2:42 pm
Yeah, the legend of The Hippie Trail may be exaggerated, but my trip in 1969 from Copenhagen to Kathmandu definitely influenced the rest of my life!
July 12th, 2003 at 11:49 pm
Hey Rolf,
I’m traveling in Nepal this summer…and have found myself constantly thinking and fantasizing about the old Asia Overland days… and wishing for more information and stories from that time.
Clicked into your site last evening, found the post about Tomory’s book, wandered next door from the Internet cafe to a bookstore (I’m in Pokhara), bought a used copy of it, and stayed up all night reading it.
The only other account of the hippie trail I’ve found so far is a weak, slightly veiled autobiographical novel by Dorthy Mierow called “Kathmandu, Treks, and Hippies Too.” She came here overland, joined the Peace Corp, and stayed on for 30 years until she died… seems to be a local hero in Pokhara among the Nepalis.
She includes some Nepali perspectives on the hippies, as well as how they mixed or clashed with aid workers and missionaries who had already been here.
She also brings up (which is only hinted at in Tomory’s book) the anti-American feelings during that time. I for some reason thought that this was a problem unique to my generation of American backpackers thanks to Clinton and Bush. She writes that other European backpackers and many of the nationals where they traveled would go after Americans because of the Vietnam War. In Tomory’s book, Indian’s were angry with Americans for Nixon’s support of Pakistan during the 1971-72 War, and kept asking US backpackers if they were CIA. This summer most Western backpackers and many Nepalis (even touts) feel the need to bring up the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq within about two minutes of starting a conversation.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I’ve been checking the bookshops in Pokhara and Kathmandu for your Vagabonding book, but no luck yet… a few more months perhaps. I should have brought a few copies with me to start pollinating the shops here with.
July 13th, 2003 at 3:12 am
Thanks everyone for the comments. And Erik, thanks for the link to your old Hippie Trail photo gallery. Fascinating stuff. Joe, you might be interested in reading Tomory’s book, as it pretty much concurs with you that Asia travelers were seeking intoxication as much or more than enlightenment back then.
Adam — great to hear that you’re on the road this summer (and let me know if you ever do find copies of Vagabonding floating around India; I’ve started to see a few turn up in Thailand). I’ll have to keep an eye out myself for Mierow’s book. Cleo Odzer wrote a Hippie Trail memoir called Goa Freaks that is supposed to capture the self-absorbed decadence of the drug scene back then. (Though Odzer’s Patpong Sisters, which is about Thai prostitution, ranks as one of the worst books I’ve ever read — so don’t expect much from her prose.)
Indeed, Tomory didn’t deal much with how Asian locals saw the hippies — though I’m not surprised that the drug-addled Westerners didn’t always fare so well in the eyes of natives. I got the impression that one drawback of not having guidebooks was that backpackers back then had no clue about local cultural norms, so they just kind of projected their own fantasies onto the locals. And it was probably not always the best strategy to “wander around naked or do whatever you felt like” in lands that in ways were far more conservative than the lands the hippies were running away from.
As for anti-American feelings mentioned by Mierow in the Hippie Trail era, I’ve heard similar sentiments from other contemporary reports. In his anthropological study The Tourist, Dean MacCannell also talks about the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, and how American hitchhikers in Europe would scrawl “Canadian Student” on their destination cards to better their chances of getting rides. (Indeed, this isn’t the first generation American backpackers have tried the “I’m Canadian, not American” ruse!)
July 23rd, 2003 at 4:44 am
i love the traveller stories and hippie trails but just wanted to know the answer of this question…- What does one do after expierencing a long journey or travel and what does one do after returning…..the same old life…
alwayz wondered………..
July 26th, 2003 at 6:38 pm
Rolf,
Thanks for highlighting Tomory’s great book. I traveled the trail during 1968-70 and knew at least one of the contributors in the book-Jasper Newsome(although I knew him as Ram Giri-his Indian sadhu name). People like Jasper and the others like him I met then were unlike any I�ve come across since; real trail blazers on the �Hippie Trail�. I think it�s important to note that the Hippie Trail evolved out of the European Beatnik(known as the �Beats�)scene (Americans didn�t start showing up in great numbers until the late sixties) which had been traveling to Istanbul, Matala(Crete), Ibiza, Morocco since the early 60s. While many of these were part or full-time University students, others had dropped out and supported themselves with seasonal work and/or dope dealing. There were also a lot of junkies and their quest revolved of course around finding cheap dope-you could buy an ampoule of pharmaceutical morphine in India for about ten cents and the country was saturated with opium.
September 10th, 2003 at 1:56 am
Hi Rolf -
I haven’t read Tomory’s book yet, but I will order it as soon as possible. Recently, I have translated my illustrated article about The Hippie Trail into English, which might interest some of the old veterans. The address is http://www.ponty.dk/hippietr.htm
Regards from Erik Pontoppidan, Copenhagen, Denmark
(on the hippie trail in 1969)
September 25th, 2003 at 8:52 pm
I started out on the hippie trial in ’68, got waylayed in Istanbul for over a year, and that changed the course of the rest of my life. I did eventually make it to Asia, though not in the relevant time period. I thoroughly enjoyed your photos from ’69, Erik P. Those were amazing times. Pianoseeds
November 10th, 2003 at 12:41 pm
Hello Rolf and Others: Terrific review which prompted me to buy Tomory’s book. I’m writing a book on Afghanistan in the 20th century and am searching for 2 bits of info – any help would BE GREATLY APPREECIATED: (1). can someone tell me the history of Siggi’s in Kabul?What finally happened to it? and (2). T. Leary was arrested at Kabul Airport in Jan. 1973, coming I believe from Iran (Tomory mentions him being in Mashad). I’d love to know which airline he got off from…..Thanks. I’m a prof at Univ. of New Hampshire, USA. Please answer to mwherold@cisunix.unh.edu . Marc Herold
December 6th, 2003 at 7:18 am
Yeah it was a trip. I went from Canada to Nepal and back for about $1000,00 and I never exploited any of the locals. This trip did totally change my life but I got separated from a person name Vincent Hubert (US) in Goa. Anyone seen him???? – Lou
December 14th, 2003 at 3:24 pm
Some of my exploits where written about in this book Let Sleeping Dogs Lie page 186. I sent many Tibetan Mastiffs to every major city in the US loaded with hash. I also sent a Tibetan pony as well as Lesser Pandas and Himalyan Bears as well all loaded with the finest Nepali cream. I have written a book about my days in Nepali its called the King of Nepal. http://www.kingofnepal.net
November 5th, 2005 at 2:42 am
Hi, over to Laos & Thailand in a couple of weeks and am looking for hippie places to visit & relax for a while. Any suggestions appreciated. Alex
June 4th, 2006 at 3:16 am
I first travelled that road in 1968 – from the UK to Australia. The reverse trip in 1970 and a repeat of the first trip in 1972. All without a Lonely Planet guidebook. It wasn’t all about hippies! There were many people who were just travelling from Australia to Europe and v.v. – who looked upon the hippies as freaks who went to India to get cheap drugs. After that the trip was taken over by Magic Buses carrying people with lots of money and no sense.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Just read the book review above, and yes, guilty as charged.
I traveled out of Istanbul in ’68 via Tehran, Kabul and ‘Pindi, ended up in the Crown Hotel Delhi.
Met a guy called Mike and we walked in Afghanistan and sat on the back of a truck grinding it’s way over the mountains in the snow on our way to Chitral in Northern Pakistan.
So many memories but so few with any reasonable focus, it would be so good to have a dialogue with similar souls in order to shed a bit more light on such a life changing experience.
Any of you out there?
January 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I was going to take the Hippie Trail in 1968, but got busted in Istanbul with 30 grams of hash and spent the next five years there instead (I am called Eric in “Midnight Express, not a very good movie…). So all got is the stories of all my friends who made it to India.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
What memories come flooding back reading this site. We were not all searching for either enlightenment or drugs – some of us just wanted to travel and see something different. and it didn’t come much more different than Afghanistan in those days. The tribal lands at the top of the Khyber Pass were unforgetable and no words could really explain what it was like. And yes no mobile phones, no email no cheap flights boy did we have a good time
January 7th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
What memories come flooding back reading this site. We were not all searching for either enlightenment or drugs – some of us just wanted to travel and see something different. and it didn’t come much more different than Afghanistan in those days. The tribal lands at the top of the Khyber Pass were unforgetable and no words could really explain what it was like. And yes no mobile phones, no email no cheap flights boy did we have a good time
January 16th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Not all of us were druggies in search of a cheap source. 40 years later I still recall the sky in Herat, the vivid colours of the buses, the nobility and arrogance of the hill tribesmen, and the splendour of the Kyber Pass.
And for those package holiday seekers who fly in and spend time surrounded by the hotels in Ko Samui, I remember when it was just miles of empty beaches, trees full of monkeys, and the sheer pleasure of having no-one else around for weeks. To get there you didn’t fly, you took the overnight train from bangkok, shared Mekong whisky with all and sundry, got off at Surit Thani, took the bus to Bandon, and then the leaky old ferry across to the island.
I was a traveller, and for 4 years of my life I tried to understand the world I was living in.
Inevitably, that journey and the people I met, travellers and locals, changed my outlook on life in many ways.
To all I shall be eternally grateful.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:50 am
sylvia, i wish you had left somewhere to contact you. tho there were women on the road, there werent all that many of us. contact me if you read this again. india-afghanistan-india-afghanistan and then india india india 1968-1975. I live here in india now, again. oh yes, how it changed our lives.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Does anyone remember staying in Fire Brigade Road in Delhi about 1969?
August 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I went on the Hippie Trail in 1971. It changed my life. Years after, I still think often about it.
Part of me is still at Yerner’s and the Pudding Shop at Istanbul; Amir Kabir at Tehran,
SuperBehzad at Herat,and all of the special places of Kabul (Khyber Pass, Marco Polo, Nuristan Hotel,
Chicken Street, The 25 hour club etc.) It seems almost impossible that the trail dosen’t exist anymore
as it lives in me 37 years after. It seems so close.
Yves
August 26th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
You talk of a guy supposedly travelling on 6 dollars, from Delhi to Damascus, well, I travelled on 10 from Delhi to Istanbul, and that is further, unlike what you said, by stereotyping everyone you are painting a fake picture having no money, a result of not knowing exactly where you were going or for how long, a result of living spontaneously, not going to India to get into Hnduism or join the Hari what’sitsnames(?) but to have a life, in some way where you was not being told what to do by western society and its standards, where back then there was even less talk of complying to the reality that consumerism destroys the earth thart sustains us. Your portrait, I must say, most of it I don’t like because it sounds like you yourself was not there. For instance, I shied away from any talk of religion or God though I observed it well and respected it. Didn’t anyone tell you about visions and insight and enlightenment, and seers and saddhus and what it means to meet, occasionally, a real one?
Travelling on 10 dollars with the three of us meant eating hardly anything which deposited back in Europe as three very humble individuals who did not take anything for granted, having gotten used to, after the first few days, not expecting so many things in a day, like spolit western people do stuffing their faces and necks all day long, getting obese. If you want to know what high is, it’s going through things like that that make you realise exactly what it is to have and not to have.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Cor blimey . . . . . there is a vibrancy in this thread that matches scratched graffiti on battered roadsigns at desolate road junctions on “the way” . . . wow . . . how do you reply here ?? . Bunny, when in Delhi between Nov 68 and Oct 71 i would stay on the roof of the Crown if i had money and in the temple of the Astronomy Gardens off Connaught Circus if i didn’t. If you are English, had long dark hair and travelled with a Dutch girl and maybe a kid then we met. . . Shivaan(July 23rd ’03) what happens after returning . . . in many ways there is no coming back, if you have read mountaineer Joe Simpson “Into the Void” you will know coming down a mountain can be harder than going up. I suffered real culture shock returning after 4yrs away and have never fitted back properly into mainstream society . . . . but hey, i’ve only got into computers in the last couple of years and only in the last few weeks did it occur to me to google “overland to India”. The Danish guy has a nice page with real photos, the bus drivers, swagman tours, are interesting and fun but obviously very bus orientated. My favourite read so far has been Tony G at http://www.realtravel.com One problem for me in returning to England was in not knowing anybody who had been out of Europe, in 4 years i had been through Istanbul 5 times, i had been in North Africa and all the countries to the East and i quickly learned that i could not really communicate with anybody about these journeys. Not that i was unwilling to talk, rather that there was not any interest. Terry, in his post above mine, puts it beautifully in his last paragraph.
I got back at the end of ’71. By winter ’79 i realized the memories were fading, i was living on a squatted farm overlooking Loch Ness in Scotland and thought i had better try and get some of it down on paper, cos for me at least, it had been pure magic. Now Tony G’s account of the journey has inspired me to get those notes out. I am going to put them on the same site he has used, realtravel, as it seems the best place i have come across and reading the timeless posts on this thread has only given me a stronger sense of purpose to do this. I am thinking it will be fun and nostalgic and probably a glorious waste of time . . . . but, you know . . . we went travelling and we see things a bit different to those that didn’t . . . loadsa love , Paul.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I am looking for a female American called Patsy who was/is an albino. I met her in India in 1969 and we travelled a lot. I also think that those of us who travelled on the route were re-travelling re-visiting past lives as a soul memory. No more no less.
October 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Yes,i was told by saddhu up by Kulu i had been in India in a previous life and i was born in England for a reason, can’t say it is very obvious why though. Sorry, can’t help with Patsy, good luck on the rest of the road. P.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:41 am
I did the overland trip to India with “New Frontier” in 1968. Travelled with a group of 10 in a Ford Transit. I was a very naive untravelled English girl. The trip changed my life. The group broke up in Delhi, but not wanting to go home, I wired home for money and continued on to Perth, then Dampier, Roebourne – it was the most exciting moment of my life, flying into Perth late at night, not knowing a soul. I felt immediately that Oz was the place I should be. I quickly fell in with an Aussie bloke, had two children and never went home apart from holidays. I now live in Melbourne and am trying to find any of the fellow travellers from that trip. Unfortunately I only have first names, except for the driver, Dan Smith. So Gil, Bill Betty,Sonny, anyone – would love to hear from you.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:42 am
hi
it has taken me longer to find this page than it did to travel bu ‘Budget Bus’ from Tottenham Court Road in London to Delhi in Nov 73.
Anyone else on that journey.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Does anyone remember that in Istanbul, there was a book at Yener’s (Or Gulhane) in which travellers wrote their comments and remarks? I wrote mine in the Fall of 1971. What happened to the book? Are there any copies that were later made as souvenirs. Also looking for a Canadian girl named Bev met at Istanbul in 1971 and seen again at Herat, Afghanistan.
Yves
October 28th, 2008 at 12:38 am
bunny Yes I stayed at fire brigade lane in 1969. My partner and I had just arrived in Delhi by
train to discover our bags had been pilfered so looking for a cheap hotel we were taken to
a private house run by a scotch drinking indian lady
by the name of Mrs Bannerje. She was quite a character sitting at a table in the driveway where
you had to pass but not before relating your days activities to her with her helpful advice as
where not to go as so and so sells hashish another buys passports another changes money on the
black market etc. Mrs Bannerjee did not charge travellers money to stay I think she either
enjoyed a procession of young people through her house or else she was on a commission from the
people she told us not to go to. I also remember her mother in law sniffing around the rooms
in case anyone was smoking ganga.
Mrs Bannerjee helped me out as being rather young and trustful I fell foul to a scam where I
parted with my travellers cheques and she advised me how to report the ‘loss’.
Years later I revisited India and took her a bottle of Johnny Walker however her daughter told
me she no longher drank as she had alzhiemers. Still I have fond memories of Mrs Bannerjee she
was like no other lady I met in India.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 am
It is really fascinating to hear about all of your experiences on the hippie trail! I am currently researching the hippie legacy: from Ginsberg’s agori fascination and Timothy Leary’s psychedelic manuals inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead to Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna and the Hunryalists’ new aesthetic, my paper will trace the frontiers explored by those on and off the bus.
I spent a year in Varanasi myself and am fluent in Hindi. I now am really interested in the confluence of “western” and South Asian culture in the 60s and 70s; to what extent did the hippie trail generate a cultural exchange between locals and hippies? I am also generally interested in how the “hippie mentality” (if such a thing exists!) has continued to shape the image of India in the “West”. I am particularly hoping to find anyone who was in the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna, but am also genuinely interested in anyone’s stories that might be relevant to this topic. Please continue to post your experiences or email me (hanshanbanana@hotmail.com).
December 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I have staid Fire Brigade Lane at Benerjee from 22 sept.1969 till 7 oct. 1969. It was 5 roupies the bed. While regastring I had to promise “not to smoke”. There I met two American boys named James and Gary Gary plaid flute. After some days I staid with them in the habitation they in the yard. I slept in a bed outside. After, I went to Hardward and Rishikesh (staying at Shivananda ashram. I visited Maharashi Mahesh Yogi.
I staid again in Delhi with a Lady I met at Shivananda. She brought me to visit Ananda Mayi at Mathura where I spend a fasting week very “tipical”.I traveled to Rajasthan and to Jim Corbett Park. I went back to France on 15 february 1970.
February 10th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
I travelled that road in 1966 through yenners in Istanbul and through the east of Turkey which was the wildest place Ive ever been. The Kabul Hotel I remember well with all the overland vehicles, many for sale! On through Peshawar another wild place with gun stalls in the markets and customers trying them out with live ammo. In katmandhu we ran into trouble with a guy named Rana who ran one of the hippy cafes, cant remember which cafe. My girlfriend got pneumonia and ended up in American hospital outside the city with a ward full of hepatitis casualties. Went on from India to Bangkok which was like toytown in those days, we even hitch hiked taxis! Anyone remember the Thai Song Gheet a chinese cafe cum flophouse, amazing place. Went on to Singapore across to an island called Tanjungpinang and through Indonesia to Portuguese Timor and Darwin. Did the return trip 2 years later. I wrote a book about it but didnt really try to get to get it published. Please contact me lespoyner@talktalk.net if you wanna chat
February 17th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Thank you all for taking me back. I travelled the hippy trail between 72 to 74 as a naive Canadian farm girl who fell in with a German drug smuggling gang living in Berlin while hitchhiking.
I had no previous drug experience of any kind and I selfishly used the troup to get as far away from my prosaic roots as I could possibly manage. My trip landed me in the mountains of Lebanon when Beirut was bombed by the Syrians. It took my through the Kabul gorge three times to buy hundreds of Kilos of the finest Afghani in Kandahar. I took me to Manali where we pressed it into the false bottoms of Samsonite suitcases destined for Australia. It took me to Goa where we swam naked in the ocean and were blissfully ignorant of the offense we offered to the very forgiving locals.
It seems I am not the only one who has written or is writing about that time. I invite anyone who wishes, to write to me through my email memivon@telusplanet.net
Thanks all for a fabulous trip through memory lane.
March 16th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Hi, Oh the memories come flooding back. Me and my man did the trail in 68 hitching from England to India, Ceylon and Nepal, out via southern Iran and Pakistan and back via Afghanistan. Spent 3 months living in the tourist police station in Colombo waiting for money which never arrived. Ended up in Calcutta robbed of our last £10, but the same day our money turned up – instant karma? Did a second trip in 69 and made it to Sydney where I worked for a year before heading back to uk again. Met wonderful people in Oz, Don (ex Chartered Accountant), Rob (he picked up malaria in Cairns)beautiful Angelica(Jelly)and Dick (diabetic), American lady Maggie, Paul, Jock, Jill, Don and Marilyn – a really wild couple – where are you all now? Les Poyner mentioned Thai Song Greet, great place to get work as a film extra. The Chinese owners cooked up fantastic food but my first experience of bed bugs. As Paul (#24) and others have said it’s hard to share your stories with people who don’t really understand and can be judgemental. I had the most amazing experiences of my life and hope to write that book someday so my children at least can get a clue what it was like.
March 21st, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Hi everyone,
Came across this fascinating website and enjoyed all the comments. I am writing a book on Indian cinema and the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna is a major part of that. I notice many of you know about the film (Hannah, you are even researching it.) If any of you have personal memories of Freak Street, kathmandu, The Bakery (again Kathmandu), the shooting of Hare Rama Hare Krishna, I would love to hear from you. Any pictures of Kathmandu/Bakery in the 1970s would be greatly appreciated.
You can write to me directly at sidharth01@gmail.com
thanks
March 29th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Traveled this trail and one of the few who did not go for the drugs or to break-away. My purpose was to see the Taj Mahal but got so much more then I ever expected. Memories and experiences of a life-time. Dysntary was a reality, our bus was shot at in Eastern Turkey, broke my hand over a Pakistan’s head, bench seats with chicken’s under our feet on a Afgan bus, selling our blood in Tehran, Khyber Pass was a white knuckle bus ride, etc., etc. Having reconnected recently with one I began this journey with we have relived this adventure with my journal entries. We departed from Istanbul April 10th, 1970. The best part of this journey was we did it with no books, everyone talked to everyone, politics were not discussed, traveling with no date or time restraints. Adjusting to a traditional lifestyle after returning home was very hard. My only regret…I didn’t travel longer and further. P.S. The Taj was all I had hoped it would be!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:38 pm
I wrote the 9th post, and a little over 4 years later Bengt (aka Eric) wrote the 16th. Hey, Bengt!! The last time I saw you we were staying for free at the Four Seasons in Istanbul (aka Sultan Ahmet). I had a corner room looking down on a butcher shop where we’d drop a shopping list and money into a basket at the end of a rope, lower it through the window and the butcher would run our errands for us, come back later that day and fill our basket with food. Forty years can make one nostalgic for that beautiful old marble ceza evi. What an experience. Bengt, do you want to know a secret? Write me in La Roque Gageac, 24250, France.
June 30th, 2010 at 2:11 am
Truly fascinating article (found it through http://www.rorymaclean.com/hippietrail/links.html). As a traveller in the modern day it’s fair to say I take a lot of inspiration from the ‘movement’ of the Hippie Trail. I wouldn’t say I look up to it, but I certainly enjoy reading about it.
There seems a certain kinship between the travellers of the era, which I don’t believe we’ll ever see again in travel circles, unless the individuals are attached to a formal movement i.e. volunteering, teaching etc. Which seems to me, to be the diametric opposite of the ethos behind the Hippies.
October 10th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Well, i stayed just in istambul, and around.it was a mess in the hotel many people died in the hotel rooms,
opium was chep, the crazy police sometimes came to pick people and jail them for nothing, so when I saw
people beaten for nothing that came fron the east I said, back.
Thre were all kind of people, even from japan.
I can tell you many stories.
I was a kind of anarchist beatnick.
Love is all you need.
January 28th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
we visited Istanbul last year and visited the Pudding Shop. I was reading the newspaper cuttings on the wall when an old man asked me what my interest was. It turned out to be the owner . THe waiter took our photos infront of the restauraunt , me plump, 60, dodgy knees, my husband dogy with a walking stick, oh so so different from our original visit , in our 20s , the world at our feet, final destination Australia.
May 7th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
I had £45 when I left the UK in Sept 1977 Was very unprepared naive and optimistic, but it was enough to get me to India, still had £15 when I arrived in Mauritius some 6 months later. Admittedly I had Trailfinders pre-paid vouchers covering my journey from Instanbul to Delhi:-) Sold all I could on the way including a Zenith EM near Bombay for $150 this paid for my flight to Mauritius.
This is the first time I have looked up other peoples Hippie trail trips and to be honest makes me feel quite emotional. I life changing event for me in 1977.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:35 am
I traveled the route in 1969. I have many memories that this thread has cause me to start writing down. Why isn’t there a site where we can all share our memories? Someone needs to start a blog type thing, where people can post stories, photos etc. Maybe connect with old friends. Here’s my email tom.in.1969@gmail.com
August 6th, 2011 at 3:15 am
40 years this month before a couple of likely lads set off for Australia from Liverpool in a dodgy old Commer van ,Get your Ya Ya’s out,Janis,Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Jimmie Hendrix
It wasn’t the dope,or doing it cheap it was the sheer freedom of it ,coupled with adventure.
All those that had to drive into Iraq and wait for the Shah of Iran to have his 2500th birthday party and reopen the borders,hello and what a time.
For me Aghanistan stands head and shoulders above everywhere else for the people ,the country and the exotic nature of the place felt in’71.
I still get the Bombay squits but small price to pay for an experience that changed our lives and can never be taken away
Thanks for the stories
September 4th, 2011 at 3:49 am
Hi,
There seems to be a lot of intetrest in tales from the ’70s Hippie trail overland to India.
I made that journey in 1973. I am am now a Buddhist monk (since 1975). I have written an autobiography, One Night’s Shelter, which largely documents my overland travel from Amsterdam to Morocco, across North Africa to Greece and then on through Turkey to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Though the last half of the book is about my religious conversion, not hippie travel.
The book is posted on my blog: bhanterahula.blogspot.com (on the books page) and can be downloaded for free.
If you care to use any of the material describing my adventures on the hippie trail of the time, you can do so.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have any comment or questions.
September 29th, 2011 at 10:40 am
I went overland to Nepal in 1975. I rarely talk about it but the places I saw are with me to this day. The following words of T.S.Eliot, from his poem ‘Little Gidding’ may be of interest:
‘We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
October 7th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Hello everyone!
My name is Johan Flybring, I am currently studying Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster in London. I am passionate about travelling and the Hippie Trail has been a fascination of mine for a long time. I am actually in the early stages of making a documentary about the Hippie Trail, which will culminate in my recreation of the journey next year.
The itinerary and essence of my trip will be based on the stories of people who travelled the Trail back in the days. I would therefore like to interview as many people as possible to create a comprehensive chronicle of this wonderful part of history. These interviews would be filmed and would constitute a major part of my documentary.
Would any of you original overlanders consider letting me interview you for my project?
Interviews can only take place in London unfortunately, but any contribution at all (e.g. old photos and videos, Skype interviews, etc.) would be greatly appreciated. Please contact me by email at jflybring@aol.com.
Thank you for your time.
Best regards,
Johan Flybring
November 10th, 2011 at 7:59 am
My mum cried as I left for my trip in April 1972. I stayed at Yucel, ate at Yenner’s and the Pudding Shop, Amir Kabir. and the Kesri in Delhi. Although the Kesri closed many years ago, the sign was finally removed in 2010 during redevelopment in Pahr Ganj. Anyway I’m off to old Stamboul next week (Nov 2011) to see what remains of memories. Peace and Namaste
November 10th, 2011 at 8:08 am
and it cost me £9 in transport costs to get from Preston to Kathmandu. and I found a lump of Afghan black as big as a fist in a drawer in the YMCA in Calcutta. and was blown away by Gamelan……..ah
November 11th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Hello, I’m a hippie from way back but never left Australia for the hippie trail. I’m writing a mainstream fiction novel set in Afghanistan, mainly Kabul where the main character is a hippie who arrived in the mid-70s and never left. As you can imagine she has a story to tell. The setting is in modern times so there’ll be plenty about the Taliban and the warlords and the Western forces. I’ve been enjoying reading this article and the comments and have found some interesting information for my main character’s backstory. Thank you so much for the post and for everybody’s first-hand accounts of the hippie trail.
Denise
November 12th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
My only direct experience was with a nest of stragglers who had fallen away from the main column and were holed up in caves on the southern coast of Crete. A depressing, dirty, glassy-eyed bunch, though what I found most disturbing were the few among their number with sharp, feral eyes: wolves among somnambulant sheep.
My actual dealings with them went well enough. After a few attempts to panhandle or sell me stolen property they decided that I was part of what was wrong with the world and left me in peace.
December 12th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Regarding what DEK says. There were certainly many on the trail who were took advantage of both the people of the country in which they were guests, and their fellow travelers. I was so sick of seeing these abuses along the trail, that I did not go to Nepal when I got to India, which I regret. But I just didn’t want to see any more hippies, even though I certainly would have been considered one. But I had my own money and didn’t scam anyone, I got stoned but went out and tried to meet the local people and see the world I was traveling in. Too many getting stoned all day and hardly leaving the hotel. Too many ripping off whoever they could. Too many with an arrogant attitude of “I’m a Westerner and superior to these people”. I guess the majority of travelers were Ok, but when I got to India, I just wanted to go places that weren’t flooded with hippies. So I missed Nepal….shit! tom.in.1969@gmail.com
December 27th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
69-70 Australia via SEASia, India, Nepal etc. overland to UK.would love to hear of anyone who inhabited the Bakery between Feb-May 70, our little place up by Swyambunath above the rifle range; Nakal’s, Bishnu’s Chai and Pie palace, and of course Ling Kesar Tibetan Restaurant, where I left my rucksack, meaning to return…
February 28th, 2012 at 3:28 am
I wrote a book about the Hippy trail ‘ Lifting the Blues’ self published on Amazon Kindle. Take a look from England to Australia in 1966
February 28th, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Travelled the trail from London to Srinigar in 1974! It was as much an inner journey as an outer one. A picaresque adventure that changed me forever. The culture shock, the heightened awareness from such a discontinuity from one’s usual life exposed me to more of myself than I’d yet known. It was transformative!
Also, one would meet so many people! You’d bid farewell to someone you’d met and spent a few days with in, say, Afghanistan and bump into them again a week late in Pakistan and it would feel like meeting an old friend you hadn’t seen for months! Such was the intensity of travelling the trail. I haven’t been back since but, for better or worse, I’ve never fully left. It made quite an impression!
March 15th, 2012 at 4:28 am
My girlfriend and I travelled from Kathmandu to London in 1973, the outbound bus [Frontier International] which was due to take us crashed in Pakistan and we waited 2 months in Kathmandu for another.
Anyone on this trip reading this, I’d love to hear from you.
March 15th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
I was on the magic bus (from Istanbul to Kabul) in February 1971 and stayed in Kabul in the Nuristan Hotel in shar-e-naw area for about 8 month. I was 16 years only and was deported in November 1971. Anyone on this trip in 1971 reading this, I’d also love to hear from you
March 15th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
oohps – you can contact me via lundehundt@me.com
March 20th, 2012 at 10:43 am
I traveled from 1969 to 1971 from Eastern Europe through Istanbul, then overland to Pakistan (Gilgit), then back, through Greece, to Germany; then via Egypt and Lebanon overland to India, including Nepal and Bhutan, then back overland to Europe and then from Luxembourg to the U.S. Part of the time I stayed at the places frequented by others, like the Amir Kabir Hotel in Tehran or the others I forgot, the Pudding Shop in Istanbul. I traveled four times between Turkey and Pakistan, and I managed to vary the route. Iraq was impossible for me to get a visa. There were two border crossings between Turkey and Iran; I crossed the northern one at Dogubayazit three times and the southern one once. I crossed the single Afghan/Iranian exit three times and the single Iran/Pakistan crossing once. Across Afghanistan, I went the usual Herat-Kanadahar-Kabul route once, the Herat-Chaghcharan-Kabul route once (very difficult), and the Herat-Mazar (by air)-Kabul once. In India I traveled through the North, as far as east as Shillong and Gauhati, and was in Bhutan as well as Nepal. I encountered hippie travelers mainly in Istanbul, Tehran, Herat, Kanadahar, Kabul, probably Delhi, and certainly Kathmandu, but not in these more out of the way locations. Goa was becoming “the” destination, and there was a silly rumor that Jimi Hendrix would be there on Jan. 1, 1970. I share the sentiments of others regarding the arrogance of many of the travelers. A lot of them seemed to dislike Muslims and would idealize Hindus (probably because of the Beatles, pop culture, etc.), thinking that once they got to India, they would live on the generosity of others and not need money. Enjoyed reading about similar experiences—-dysentery, waiting for money. It took a long time to adjust from the trip.
May 9th, 2012 at 2:21 am
What puzzles me is that with so many of us having made the journey, why isn’t there more written about it? Why isn’t there a website, dedicated to our stories, travels, photos, memories? It was an important part of so many of our lives. Where are all of you?