THE RISE
AND FALL OF THE
HIPPIE TRAIL
Warsaw London
Munich
Paris
Rome Istanbul
Athens Tehran Beirut Kabul Peshwar Herat Lahore Amman Kathmandu Delhi
Varanasi Dhaka
Kolkata
Goa
Bankok
IT’S BEEN FORTY YEARS SINCE THE END OF THE GREAT OVERLAND TREK BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA. Mannar CONOR PURCELL EXAMINES THE ROUTE – AND LEGACY –
THOSE IDEALISTIC YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN LEFT BEHIND 44 Guesthouse in Herāt, 45 Afghanistan, 1977
Right: Apart from the odd pair of bellbottomed jeans, practical clothes reigned king in often extreme temperatures
Band-e Amir National Park, a series of six lakes in Afghanistan
Below: A flooded IT WAS, AT ONE POINT IN TIME, a rite of went by bus or by train, or by hitching ver themselves within another culture. highway between passage: a journey that started in West- lifts. One company to capitalise on the “People headed south for the beaches of Mashhad and Tehran ern Europe and crossed through the trend was aptly-named The Magic Bus, Goa in winter, based around the village Balkans, the Middle East and Southeast which picked up travellers in small, pri- of Anjuna, where there were no other Asia. This was a trek that saw tens of vate buses in Amsterdam. Prices were tourists,” says Gregory. thousands of young people attempt to cheap – in 1971, a journey from Istanbul Others headed further west, to- find enlightenment, inner peace, or just to Kathmandu cost just US$15. wards Kathmandu, which became the a rollicking good time. These were the They clutched the BIT Guide, a pro- city most associated with the route. “To hippies, the overlanders; young men and totype travel guide that was really just the road-sore travellers, medieval Kath- women who wanted to understand the photocopied sheets of paper stuck to- mandu was a kind of promised land, a world and their place in it. gether, filled with information on bus paradise lost and rediscovered,” says While the tourism revolution in the prices, clean guesthouses and the best Rory Maclean. In his seminal book on 1960s saw the majority of travellers head place to get breakfast in Kabul. The stops the trail, The Magic Bus, he wrote: “The to the beaches of southern Europe, a dif- along the way became intertwined with travellers checked into the Hotchpotch ferent breed of tourist had other plans. 1960s counterculture: Paradise Beach in and the Matchbox, dirty warrens of They would traverse Europe, the Middle Mykonos, Chicken Street in Kabul, Freak cell-like rooms with low, head-cracking East and Asia, spending months travel- Street in Kathmandu, The Pudding Shop doorways and debated how best to heal ling across 11,000 miles of terrain in or- in Istanbul. These were the original social the world and their back. der to find whatever it was they sought. networks: legions of travellers exchang- “At the Bakery, many of them sold Some yearned to escape the drudgery of ing currencies, swapping stories, giving their jeans for strings of amber and red their dead-end jobs in Luton or Liver- advice and updates from the road. felt boots embroidered with flowers. pool or London, heading to Varanasi in “I was eighteen years old when I Back then, Kathmandu was a place where India, and Kabul, and Kathmandu, and went,” says Richard Gregory, who made many believed they could find a new way to Thailand’s then-unspoiled beaches. the trip in 1974. “A basic ticket cost £50 of living, where they had a chance to im- In some ways they were following in from London to Delhi, much cheaper agine a world without boundaries.” the footsteps of the beatniks: men and than flying, and it took two or three weeks. The overland route was nothing women who travelled through America, I was away for four months in total, com- new, of course – the Silk Road was an im- Jack Kerouac’s On The Road clutched ing back on local public transport as far as portant economic and cultural route for in their hands and an ideal of escaping Istanbul then hitchhiking across Europe.” centuries, before the the isolationism of from the conformity of the post-World In Goa, long a hotbed of alternative the Ming Dynasty shut it down. That so War II America. The journey was slow culture, many travellers stayed – some many of the stops along the hippie trail – planes were out, and the majority joining ashrams to attempt to disco- were isolated from Westerners nearly 46 47
Right: Hans Roodenburg hitches a lift Some even blamed the hippies for FIVE STOPS the seismic shifts in geopolitics. The ON THE TRAIL legendary travel writer Bruce Chatwin, once said that Afghanistan’s descent 1.ISTANBUL into chaos began with the peace-loving As a trading hub for centuries, Istanbul hippies who descended on the conserv- has always been cosmopolitan. The ative country, driving “educated Af- locals barely blinked an eye when wide- ghans into the arms of the Marxists.” eyed, tie-died hippies started arriving in For some, the whole notion of East- the 60s. But the places where the over- ern Enlightenment smacked of igno- landers made their home – the Pudding rance to begin with. Even now, forty years Shop, for example – have long gone. after the end of the trail, those clichés die hard. As the Nepali writer, Rabi Thapa 2.PESHAWAR writes: “As recently as 2000, the Let’s This chaotic frontier town has always Go guide declared that “every romantic attracted the more adventurous travel- Below: Contrary to ideal you have ever envisaged about the ler, at least until the Russian invasion of popular belief, travelling Himalayan Kingdom is fulfilled.” Let’s Afghanistan, when Peshawar became on the hippie trail involved get this straight, this ain’t no Shangri-La a staging post for Mujahedeen groups. a certain dedication to paperwork – from man, it never was. Most Nepalis are poor, Back in the 60s, it was more welcoming visas to road permits or some are rich, but we’re all so disen- to foreigners, who would crash in flop vaccination certificates chanted with our Oriental enchantment houses and haggle with stallholders. that we are leaving in droves to nurture our private Nepals of the mind, an irony 3.BAMIYAN lost on most visitors. Where are we going, Long fabled among travellers for majes- you might ask? Well, we have our dreams tic buddhas that dominated the valley, too – the siren song of the West is irre- Bamiyan attracted hordes of travellers sistible. Maybe if we meet in the middle, for its climate and incredibly friendly we’ll exchange notes.” locals. The tragedy of Afghan’s more Yes, globalisation has ensured that recent history is that a place that was the hippie trail is now just a snapshot of one of the route’s highlights became in- a time before true mass air travel, before accessible to all but the most intrepid. the internet, before the sameness that dise, then where was it? No one had asked citizens return home with fried brains. permeates so many places. The stops 4.GOA where to go after the End of the Road.” The same year, Kathmandu’s Chief of on the trail were – to Western eyes at Long a magnet for those looking to During the 1960s, Nepal had opened Police started demanding a monthly least – truly eye opening experiences, drop out, this former Portuguese colony itself up to tourists, but the tourists that $1,000-rupee bribe to extend a visa. But experiences that changed the lives of was a popular place to take a break for came were not the middle-aged tour soon, paying a bribe would be the least many who travelled the route, as well as a few months. There’s still a countercul- groups that so impressed the king back of the overlanders’ worries. those that they met. If some of the ideas ture vibe today, even if five-star hotels in 1955. They were young, dreadlocked spouted by the hippies now sound rath- outnumber the meditation retreats. dreamers, many of whom had no in- IN 1979 RUSSIA INVADED AFGHANISTAN, er naïve, it’s at least hopeful, and hope tention of leaving. By the mid-Seven- and the country was effectively closed off is a commodity in short supply in places 5.KATHMANDU 400 years later, reflects the finality of onto Australia, where they attempted to ties any idealistic view the Nepalis had to Westerners. Later that year, Iran had its such as Kabul, Peshawar and Kathman- Head to Freak Street today, once with the Ming Dynasty’s decision. Kathman- integrate back into Western life. Others about tourists had long since vanished. revolution and that country too was no du these days. the highest concentration of hippies on du, for example, was completely une- stayed on as long as they could, until they King Mahendra died in 1972, and in 1975, longer welcoming to tourists. Little by lit- “For me, the trail was life-changing the entire trail, and you’ll see few remind- quipped to deal with an influx of West- either ran out of money, or went slightly a few months before his son, King Biren- tle the route had become more dangerous, in terms of education and personal de- ers of that golden era – tie-dye sarongs erners; the first group of official tourists mad. Others still had a more tragic end- dra’s coronation, there was a mass clear and there were few willing to attempt it. velopment,” says Gregory. “I came home have been replaced by Gore-tex clad only arrived in the country in the spring ing, their sense of purpose evaporating as out of foreigners. The hippies had out- Some did of course, and some died trying. with a much better understanding of the tourists planning trips to Base Camp. of 1955 and were greeted by King Ma- they reached the end of the line. As Rory stayed their welcome and had turned Most others went home or kept going west, world and its people, and a lot more con- hendra himself. The tourists – all Amer- Maclean wrote in his book, The Magic the area south of Durbar Square in the ending up in Australia or New Zealand. By fidence in my own capabilities. Those of icans – were part of a round-the-world Bus: “Many intrepids reached Nepal and centre of the city into a mess. This was the early 1980s, any hopes of a ‘hippie rev- us who did the trip are not getting any Fly to Kathmandu and to over 250 desti- cruise and spent two days in the country found themselves at a loss. Was the sacred the end of Freak Street and a precursor olution’ had long since died. Neo liberal- younger, and the trail will soon become nations worldwide with the Emirates-fly- dubai codeshare partnership that offers on a stage managed visit. mountain landscape really their spiritual of things to come. ism economics had taken over the US and a minor footnote in history at best. There greater global connectivity through more haven? Could isolated Nepal actually Pressure came from the West too. In the UK and global capitalism had begun have been attempts to “recreate” it for destination choices, one integrated loyal- FURTHER EAST OF KATHMANDU the trail sustain a harmonious fusion of East and 1973, some Western governments forced to dominate. Idealistic notions of ‘peace, modern times, but without a peaceful Af- ty programme, and the convenience of ended, blocked by the Himalayas. Some West? And if Kathmandu, hidden by a the Nepali government to revoke long- love and happiness’ seemed like what they ghanistan the idea is a non-starter. And travelling on a single ticket with seamless
flew to Indonesia or Thailand and then ring of snow-covered peaks, wasn’t para- term tourist visas, sick of seeing their ROODENBURG HANS BARRETT; BRUCE BURHAPINATH; PHOTOS: were: a throwback from another era. – there are very few hippies left.” point-to-point baggage handling.