The "Hippie Trail" phenomenon was a unique diaspora; instead of fleeing a homeland besieged by war or famine or dictatorship, thousands of well-bred affluent young people in America became refugees from circumstances that were too good. It takes a lot of reflection to make any sense of that; it was good, but not for everyone and it was governmental hypocrisies that caused much cultural unrest, in America and around the world. I was a so-called hippie on that trail. And because I - we - were called that everywhere we went whether we liked it or not, had to laughingly own up to it and admit that, yeah, we're hippies. I claim it however, with a sense of proud irony because, as preposterous as we were, there were also core values imbued within our philosophies that have unquantifiably benefited me during my travels and throughout my life.
It wasn't for meeting up with other hippies that I took to the road, I already knew plenty of them. It was for the curiosity and joy of meeting up with the world, its people and places, conventions and customs, and my personal objective - for facing head-on the challenges such an overland journey to the East would inevitably present. It was my self-appointed rite of passage. After a sheltered upbringing in midwestern suburbia, then three years in the hippie world in California - good years yet I still felt somehow naive, uneducated. I needed to settle into the wider, real world, experience it deeply and to find my place in it. I wanted to grow into adulthood through means beyond simply getting older. It was also because I couldn't come up with anything better to do at the time.
The hippie/counterculture phenomenon was about breaking free from a standardized formula for living; it was about visualizing and crafting an individualized life. It was about that thing that America cherishes most, freedom. We wanted freedom on the mental and spiritual level as well as the physical, and mysteriously, India arose to our collective mind as the place where those deeper secrets of attaining happiness and freedom were well kept and kept well alive. India holds the distinction of guarding a continuous living philosophy and actual science of enlightenment that stretches back millenniums - longer than any other spiritual system on earth. My desire to go there became strong and remained so, strong enough for me to get there, money or not. Mostly not. It did worry me though, I would need some means of income, and didn't want to get into black markets, of which there are many to choose from. I made the decision just to go, and let the chips fall as they may, maybe I'd learn some skills along the way.
I would somehow reach India I pledged, and regarded the day I left the country into Mexico as my point of no return!Being challenged but not deterred by doubt or difficulties or how long it might take, I lived and traveled slowly in and through Mexico, Central America, Europe, Morocco, Greece and Afghanistan, altogether for five years before reaching India, then spending several more years in the Indo/Asian region. What I saw and felt was far greater than anything I was able to express in this book: the depth and poignancy, the wonder, magnificence and scope of life as it is lived on this planet.
I write not from nostalgia or as a travel memoir, but to share what I did and what I saw, to maybe clean up a little bit the stereotyped idea of that undignified term hippie, and for the simple hope that you'll ride along with me on my journey.
