Some of these mobile homes were quite elaborate, with beds, toilets, showers and cooking facilities. 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.
Hippies did not worry about money, hotel reservations or other such standard travel planning. Hippies tended to travel light, seeking to pick up and go wherever the action was at any time. Many used backpacks and, while the majority were young, older people and families occasionally travelled the route. Ideas and experiences were exchanged in well-known hostels, hotels, and other gathering spots along the way, such as Yener's Café and The Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Sigi's on Chicken Street in Kabul or the Amir Kabir in Tehran. The bulk of travellers were Western Europeans, North Americans, Australians, and Japanese. From these cities, public or private transportation could then be obtained for the remainder of the trip. 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. To keep costs low, journeys were carried out by hitchhiking, or cheap, private buses that travelled the route.
Further travel to southern India, Kovalam beach in Trivandrum ( Kerala), to Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), and points east and south to Australia was sometimes also undertaken.įreak Street in Kathmandu, 2009 Methods of travel Kathmandu still has a road, Jhochhen Tole, nicknamed Freak Street in commemoration of the many thousands of hippies who passed through. Common destinations in the east included Delhi, Varanasi (then Benares), Goa, Bombay, Madras, Kathmandu and Bangkok. All travellers had to cross through the Khyber Pass, traversing Peshawar and Lahore in Pakistan and over the Pakistan-India border at Ganda Singh Wala (or later at Wagah). An alternative route was from Turkey via Syria, Jordan, and Iraq to Iran and Pakistan. The usual northern route passed through Tehran, Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, Peshawar and Lahore on to India, Nepal and Southeast Asia. Most journeys passed through Istanbul, where routes divided. Many from the United States took Icelandic Airlines to Luxembourg. Journeys would typically start from cities in western Europe, often London, Copenhagen, West Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, or Milan. The hippie trail largely ended in the late 1970s with the advent of a military dictatorship in Pakistan that banned many hippie attractions, the Iranian Revolution resulting in an anti-Western government, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan starting a major war, closing the route to Western travelers. The hippies tended to interact more with the local population than traditional sightseers did. In every major stop of the hippie trail, there were hotels, restaurants and cafés for Westerners, who networked with each other as they travelled east and west.
The term "hippie" became current in the mid-to-late 1960s " beatnik" was the previous term from the later 1950s. 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 hippie trail (also the overland ) is the name given to the overland journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s between Europe and South Asia, mainly from Turkey through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, to Nepal an alternative route ran from Turkey to the Levant. Musician Goa Gil in the 2001 film Last Hippie Standing
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