During the 1960s and '70s, many adventurous young tourists were eager to experience the famous Hippie Trail, which stretched from Europe all the way to Southeast Asia.
Henry Parkman/FacebookHippies trekking through the Nepalese mountains, 1978.
The sight of brightly-painted vans with psychedelic designs and peace signs plastered all over their exteriors became an increasingly common occurrence throughout the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s as more and more people were embracing the freewheeling, sometimes nomadic lifestyle of the counterculture and traveling wherever the winds (or drugs) led them.
But when traveling within the United States in a van wasn’t enough, the hippies set their gaze on some more exotic locales in Europe and Asia. Untold numbers of seekers traveled more or less the same route from northwestern Europe down through central Asia and into the Far East.
They called it the hippie trail.
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What Was The Hippie Trail?
Starting in the 1960s and reaching its peak through in the late 1970s, the hippie trail was an overland route that became popular among young Western travelers — mostly hippies and counterculture enthusiasts. It was an opportunity to travel for cheap, experiment with various psychedelics, and experience new ways of thinking.
But it didn't just appear overnight. Its roots stretched back to the 1950s, when the Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg wrote romantically of Eastern spirituality and alternative lifestyles. Then, the 1960s counterculture explosion evolved what had been a trickle of travelers into a flood.
And as Western youth grew increasingly disillusioned with materialism, the Vietnam War, and conventional society, they looked eastward for answers.
"I didn't know what I was learning there," travel writer and hippie trail veteran Rick Steves told CNET, "I was just soaking it up. I did realize that the most frightened people are those who have yet to travel. They haven't had their hippie trail... If you've done a philosophical hippie trail, you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined to build walls."
Hans Sandberg/FacebookA hippie-packed bus departing for the trail from Denmark.
The trail, which typically followed old Silk Road paths that connected the East and West, could begin in any number of major Western European cities and then head southeast toward Istanbul, in most cases. From there, routes varied, but it would generally run through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, with some going as far as Thailand.
Lured by the vague promise of enlightenment and adventure in foreign lands whose cultures were sometimes celebrated by hippie icons like The Beatles (as well as the promise of cheap and readily available drugs), these young Western tourists flocked by the dozen to try and find some sort of higher understanding, or at least a good time, along the trail.
In turn, locals in the countries along the trail eagerly seized upon the opportunity to make some money off these "Intrepids," as hippie trail adventurers were often known, and quickly set up tour bus companies (and even offered the services of "gurus") to help accommodate the young foreigners suddenly flocking to these areas.
Soon enough, books about the trail began to pop up. As the foreword to the 1973 book Head East! reads, "We've put together what we hope is a good primer to HELP guide you toward some new experiences you might like to try." And besides offering some standard info on expenses and visas, the book warns its readers about "white devil syndrome" (something similar to what a modern reader might call "white privilege") and also includes sections labeled "dope" and "munchies" for each country listed.
Elsewhere, Head East! succinctly describes the ideas that led to the loose creation of the hippie trail in the first place: "people of the East, for the most part, have a much better perspective on life, time, people, drugs, and living in general than do those of them who come from the West."
The Golden Age Of The Hippie Trail
Head East! was not the only book about the trail at the time, either. In fact, the origins of the well-known Lonely Planet travel guides also lie with the hippie trail. The book series' founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, took the trail from London to Melbourne in the early 1970s and wrote what would be the first book in the series (1973's Across Asia on the Cheap) based on their experience.
The book sold well, more volumes were published, and a new era of travel guidebooks was born. Some even suggest that the modern notion of cheap travel was, in part born out of the hippie trail.
Today's Lonely Planet guides may be a bit less hippie-friendly than the original, which advised travelers on where to score pot and how to "recoup" some travel expenses by donating blood. What's more, the original guide certainly dates itself when it notes things such as "you can get stoned just taking a deep breath in the streets" in Afghanistan, a country that was an essential part of the hippie trail but is now listed by the Department of State as a "Level 4- Do Not Travel" destination.
But at that time, Afghanistan — particularly Kabul — was the spiritual center of the trail. The city offered cheap accommodations, readily available hashish, and a shockingly (to modern readers) relaxed atmosphere that seemed tailor-made for the counterculture set. Chicken Street was a legendary destination, lined with shops selling Afghan coats, jewelry, and tribal textiles among other things. Travelers, meanwhile, could live comfortably on a dollar or two per day.
M. Kashif Mufti/FacebookA monkey joining some hippie musicians on Anjuna Beach, Goa, in the 1960s.
And that's not to mention the accessibility of marijuana.
"At that time, in Afghanistan, in India, in Nepal, marijuana was just part of the culture," Steves explained. "Not a big deal. Much like [how] people clink glasses of wine in our culture, I think."
By the 1980s, however, traveling along the hippie trail was largely a thing of the past. The flood of Western backpackers once again slowed to a trickle — and some even recommended against it. So, what changed?
Unfortunately, the multifaceted political turmoil in the region in the late 1970s quickly caused brought about the end of the hippie trail.
The Iranian Revolution in 1979 was a particularly significant contributor to the end of the trail, as it transformed what had been a relatively liberal stopover into a theocratic state hostile to Westerners. That same year, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ended Kabul's role as the trail's beating heart. Pakistan tightened its borders. Drug enforcement intensified throughout the region.
All of this, combined with a declining enthusiasm for the counterculture in the West, effectively closed the hippie trail for good. On top of that, air travel became cheaper, making it easier for travelers to skip the overland journey entirely. To many, the romance of roughing it through Asia had simply lost its appeal, but for those who made the journey at its peak, it was a defining experience.
Whether travelers of the hippie trail found what they sought is perhaps less important than the fact that they looked, that they believed transformation was possible, and that they were willing to travel halfway around the world to find it.
After this look at the hippie trail, check out the best hippie photos that truly capture the movement. Then, step inside America's 1970s hippie communes.
