The Hippie Trail, what is it?

"Hippie Trail"

In the late nineteen sixties and early seventies, hundreds and thousands of youngsters from both sides of the North Atlantic took the journey overland from Europe to India, Nepal and beyond.

Simultaneously, quite a few travellers from Australia came in via Southeast Asia and made the trip the other way round.

From Western Europe the road led through former Yugoslavia, Greece or Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal.

The one-way distance along this so-called 'Hippie Trail' was approximately 11.000 km (7.000 miles).

An old Volkswagen van was the favourite choice of those who provided their own means of transport. Trains, cheap buses and hitchhiking were the modes of transport open to the others.

Along the trail, specialised low-budget hotels provided shelter and a place to meet other travellers.

The generation that travelled in those years were called Hippies hence the name "Hippie Trail".

They were a mixture of nationalities, the most common being from the UK, USA, Germany, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

I was one of those who travelled the trail in the mid 70's returning to Australia in 1980. I was a more conservative hippie in that I did not do drugs.

My travels began in New Zealand where my ex husband and I travelled for 12 months working in hotels, backpacking and hiking our way around.

It is in these places we met the various travellers doing the trail. Their stories whet our appetite for the adventures they were having so we returned to Australia and worked and saved for our trip of a lifetime.

It took exactly one year to travel to London overland across Asia and the Middle East beginning in Bali. We left on the 2nd August 1975 and arrived in London 2nd August 1976.

I recently counted the countries I have travelled to and it came to approx 60. I am hoping to reach the 100 mark.

I have so many stories like the boat trip in Sumatra on a pirate infested river and having to walk 25km's before dark when the tigers came out to hunt.

You will need to read these stories to get the full picture.

I will be writing stories and uploading photos from my trip and sharing them with you on my site.

For those of you world wide who travelled the same trail I would like you to also share your stories and photos.

Maybe from this sharing we may have an opportunity to re-live our travels. Plus one day we may return to some of these places and we can compare the differences.

And thus the stories begin. Enjoy and share.