A road, not a single route
The “hippie trail” is a name given in hindsight to the overland journey young Westerners made from Europe to South Asia, mostly from the late 1960s until the end of the 1970s. It was never an organised route, and there was no single starting point. A typical journey began in London, Amsterdam, Paris or Munich, ran across southern Europe to Istanbul, then through eastern Turkey and into Iran, usually via Tehran. From there travellers headed east to Afghanistan, where Herat, Kandahar and Kabul were the usual stops, through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar in Pakistan, on to Lahore, and then into India. Many continued to Delhi and Varanasi, and a large number went north to Kathmandu in Nepal or south to the beaches of Goa.
The dates matter. The route was not a creation of the Summer of Love in 1967, and its popularity grew mainly from the end of the 1960s and through the early and mid-1970s. A few overland travellers had made similar journeys earlier, and the roads, railways and hostels were already used by locals, traders and pilgrims. What changed was the number of young Westerners and the culture that formed around them.
Who went and why
Most travellers were in their late teens and twenties, and they came from Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Their reasons were mixed:
- Curiosity and adventure. The journey offered a way to see places far beyond a package holiday.
- Spiritual interest. Eastern religion and meditation had become fashionable in the counterculture, and the Beatles’ stay in Rishikesh in early 1968 drew attention to India. For some, the trip was a pilgrimage; for others, the interest was shallow.
- Cost. In the 1960s and 1970s air travel was expensive, while the overland route could be done cheaply by bus, train and hitchhiking.
- Drugs. Cannabis and hashish were widely available in parts of the region, and this attracted some of the travellers. How much of the traffic was motivated by this is disputed, and many travellers had no interest in it.
- Escape. Some wanted to leave Western life for a while or permanently, a version of the same impulse behind the American counterculture and communal living at home.
What the journey was like
Travel was slow and unglamorous. Cheap buses, some of them marketed with names such as “Magic Bus” in the folklore of the trail, carried passengers from Europe, though the quality varied greatly. In Istanbul, the Pudding Shop restaurant near the Blue Mosque became a famous notice board where travellers posted requests for rides and information. Kabul had Chicken Street, with its shops selling sheepskin coats and handicrafts, and Kathmandu had Freak Street, where cheap guesthouses and cafés clustered.
The route involved real risks. Illness was common, particularly dysentery and hepatitis. Border officials could be strict, and drug offences carried severe penalties in several countries on the way, including long prison terms; the later film Midnight Express dramatised the risk in Turkey, though it was a controversial portrayal. Travellers sometimes ran out of money and needed help from embassies. Some did not return. It is also worth saying that the road was long before it was romantic, and many accounts mention how much of the time went into waiting, haggling and recovering from stomach trouble.
Effects on the places along the way
Local communities experienced the trail as an economic opportunity and sometimes as an irritation. Guesthouses, tea stalls, tailors and shopkeepers served a steady stream of visitors, and in places such as Kathmandu a tourist economy began to form. At the same time, differences in dress, behaviour and attitudes to drugs and nudity caused friction, and some governments came to regard the travellers as a nuisance. Nepal, for instance, ended the open sale of cannabis products in the early 1970s.
Why the trail closed
The overland route did not end with a single event. Several developments combined between 1978 and 1980. Afghanistan went through a coup in April 1978 and then a Soviet invasion in December 1979. Iran’s revolution in 1979 made the country far less welcoming to Western visitors. The Iran-Iraq war began in 1980. Together these changes closed off the central stretch of the road for most travellers. Cheaper flights also played a part: the arrival of wide-body jets such as the Boeing 747 in 1970 helped lower fares over the following decade.
Legacy
The trail left a lasting mark on how people travel. Independent backpacking, budget guidebooks and the “gap year” all owe something to it. The Lonely Planet guide publishing company grew out of an overland trip made by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who published their first guide, Across Asia on the Cheap, in 1973. Some of the places that were small stops on the route, such as Goa and Kathmandu, became established tourist destinations. Parts of the route can be travelled again today, though it is subject to the security conditions in each country and it should not be assumed that the old journey can simply be repeated.