This is the first history of the Hippie Trail. It records the joys and pains of budget travel to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ‘points east’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in a clear, simple style, it provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who travelled eastwards. The book is structured around four key debates: were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs? Did they encounter love or sexual freedom on the road? Were they basically just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? It also considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts, and will appeal to those interested in the Trail or the 1960s counterculture, as well as students taking courses relating to the 1960s.

It was a new age, one called the Age of Aquarius, with a restless, ideological generation full of a reverence for new worlds opening up to new ideas. When the Beatles introduced the mystique of India to pop culture, the Hippie Trail was established as hip adventurers traveled overland from Europe to Kathmandu and India. Hunter was not among these hipsters. Still bitter over the way he was treated as a Marine combat veteran home from the Vietnam War, he felt the allure of the open road in America and in Europe. While getting visas in Vienna, he came across a Polish girl, Ewa, whose Politburo father got her unequal privileges she gladly abused to join Hunter on the trek to India to check out the new-age ashrams. Shared experiences and hardships bonded them, but Cold War politics made falling in love the worst hardship of all.

The famous hippie trail--forty years later!

Tracing the history of the Hippie Trail and those who followed it, this book explores the motivations and experiences of these young travellers, mapping their everyday interactions with locals and the joys and hardships of independent budget travel.

This is the first history of the Hippie Trail. It records the joys and pains of budget travel to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other 'points east' in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in a clear, simple style, it provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who travelled eastwards. The text is structured around four key debates: were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs? Did they encounter love or sexual freedom on the road? Were they basically just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? It also considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts, and will appeal to those interested in the Trail or the 1960s counterculture, as well as students taking courses relating to the 1960s.

This memoir recounts a journey undertaken during an era marked by innocence and naivety, yet brimming with excitement. It was a time when one could traverse from Europe to Asia entirely by land, savouring the gradual shift in cultures and landscapes, a feat that has become increasingly challenging in today’s world. This travelogue reflects on a privileged experience, one for which the author remains deeply grateful, having witnessed these diverse regions and cultures first-hand.