This is the first history of the hippy trail. Based on interviews and self-published works, it records the joys and pains of budget travel out to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ‘points east’ during the 1960s and 1970s. It’s written in a clear, simple style, and it provides a detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of young people who travelled eastwards. The happiness and calm that many found is noted, but the work also has a critical edge: it notes the limitations of the travellers’ journeys and the mistakes they made. We discuss the rapi ... More

This is the first history of the hippy trail. Based on interviews and self-published works, it records the joys and pains of budget travel out to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ‘points east’ during the 1960s and 1970s. It’s written in a clear, simple style, and it provides a detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of young people who travelled eastwards. The happiness and calm that many found is noted, but the work also has a critical edge: it notes the limitations of the travellers’ journeys and the mistakes they made. We discuss the rapidly changing meanings and connotations of the term ‘hippy’, and set these themes in the context of the 1960s counter-culture. The work 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 just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? Finally a fifth chapter considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts. We’ve written this book with two main audiences in mind: firstly, people with some personal interest in the trail, such as the travellers themselves (or their children); secondly, students taking courses concerned with the 1960s and its counter-cultures.