Hippie trail  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The hippie trail (also the overland) is the name given to the journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the late 1950s to the 1970s from Europe, overland to and from southern Asia, mainly India and Nepal. The hippie trail was a form of alternative tourism, and one of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible, mainly to extend the length of time away from home. The term "hippy" became current from the mid- to late 1960s; "beatnik" was the previous term which had gained currency in the second half of the 1950s.

In every major stop of the hippie trail, there were hotels, restaurants and cafés that catered almost exclusively to cannabis-smoking Westerners, who networked with each other as they travelled east and west. The hippies tended to spend more time interacting with the local population than traditional sightseeing tourists.

Routes

Journeys would typically start from cities in western Europe, often London, Amsterdam, or Athens. Many from the United States took Icelandic Airlines to Luxembourg. Most journeys passed through Istanbul, where routes divided. The usual northern route passed through Tehran, Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, Peshawar and Lahore on to India. An alternative route was from Turkey via Syria, Jordan, and Iraq to Iran and Pakistan. All travellers had to cross the Pakistan-India border at Ganda Singh Wala (or later at Wagah). Delhi, Varanasi (then Benares), Goa, Kathmandu, or Bangkok were the usual destinations in the east. Kathmandu still has a road, Jhochhen Tole, nicknamed Freak Street in commemoration of the many thousands of hippies who passed through. Further travel to southern India, Kovalam beach in Trivandrum (Kerala) and some to Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), and points east and south to Australia was sometimes also undertaken.

Methods of travel

In order to keep costs low, journeys were carried out by thumbing (hitchhiking), or cheap, private buses that travelled the route. There were also trains that travelled part of the way, particularly across Eastern Europe through Turkey (with a ferry connection across Lake Van) and to Tehran or east to Mashhad, Iran. From these cities, public or private transportation could then be obtained for the rest of the trip. The bulk of travellers comprised Western Europeans, North Americans, Australians, and Japanese. Ideas and experiences were exchanged in well-known hostels, hotels, and other gathering spots along the way, such as the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Sigi's on Chicken Street in Kabul or the Amir Kabir in Tehran. Many used backpacks and, while the majority were young, older people and families occasionally travelled the route. A number drove the entire distance.

Hippies tended to travel light, seeking to pick up and go wherever the action was at any time. Hippies did not worry about money, hotel reservations or other such standard travel planning. A derivative of this style of travel were the hippie trucks and buses, hand-crafted mobile houses built on a truck or bus chassis to facilitate a nomadic lifestyle. Some of these mobile gypsy houses were quite elaborate, with beds, toilets, showers and cooking facilities.

Decline and revival of the trail

The hippie trail came to an end in the late 1970s with political changes in previously hospitable countries. In 1979, both the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan closed the overland route to Western travelers. The Lebanese Civil War had already broken out in 1975, and Chitral and Kashmir became less inviting due to tensions in the area. Travel organizers Sundowners and Topdeck pioneered a route through Baluchistan. Topdeck continued its trips throughout the Iran-Iraq war and later conflicts, but took its last trip in 1998. Further, air travel was becoming more affordable and Goa became the main centre of the hippie scene, based around the village of Anjuna, where hippies had been renting houses for many years before any hotels were built to accommodate the massive influx of tourists in the 1980s.

In September 2007, Ozbus embarked upon a short-lived service between London and Sydney over the route of the hippie trail. In 2008, the Odyssey Overland Company began a series of expeditions between Europe and Asia, including the old Silk Road north of Iran, across Tibet to Kathmandu. With a loosening of immigration in Iran the route has again become somewhat feasible, although continuing conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan make the route difficult to negotiate.

In the 2000s, due to the increase of budget airlines and low-cost flights from Europe, new trails have been formed and have accompanied the original hippie trail. Examples include trails towards North Africa and other destinations that are reachable by low-cost airlines. In addition, there is the Banana Pancake Trail to Asia.

Guides and travelogues

The BIT Guide, recounting collective experiences and reproduced at a fairly low-cost, produced the early duplicated stapled-together "foolscap bundle" with a pink cover providing information for travelers and updated by those on the road, warned of pitfalls and places to see and stay. BIT under Geoff Crowther, who later joined Lonely Planet, was around from 1972 until the last edition of 1980. The 1971 edition of The Whole Earth Catalog devoted a page to the "Overland Guide to Nepal." In 1973, the creators of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, Tony Wheeler and his wife Maureen Wheeler, produced a publication about the hippie trail called Across Asia On The Cheap. They wrote this 94-page pamphlet based upon travel experiences gained by crossing Western Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Iran from London in a minivan. After having traveled through these regions, they sold the van in Afghanistan and continued on a succession of chicken buses, third-class trains and long-distance trucks. They crossed Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia and arrived nine months later in Sydney with a combined 27 cents in their pockets.

Paul Theroux wrote a classic account of the route in The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Two more recent travel books — The Wrong Way Home (1999) by Peter Moore and Magic Bus (2008) by Rory Maclean — also retrace the original hippie trail.

In popular culture

The 1971 Indian film Hare Rama Hare Krishna dealt with the decadence of hippie culture. It aimed to have an anti-drug message and depicts some problems associated with Westernization such as divorce. It is loosely based on the 1968 movie Psych-Out. The story for Hare Rama Hare Krishna came to Anand when he saw hippies and their values in Kathmandu. The film was a hit, and Asha Bhosle's song "Dum Maro Dum" was a huge hit.

The 1981 song "Down Under" by Australian rock band Men at Work sets out with a scene on the hippie trail while under the influence of marijuana:

"Travelling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie."

References

• A Dream of Kabul: Das verlorene Paradies nach 25 Jahren. 1997. 80 minutes, color. A film by Wilma Kiener and Dieter Matzka.

See also

• India–United Kingdom bus routes
• Association of Special Fares Agents
• Grand Tour – 17th–19th century Continental tour undertaken by young European aristocrats, partly as leisure and partly educational.
• Indomania
• Banana Pancake Trail
• Gringo Trail
• AH1
• Marco Polo
• Afghan coat