The hippie trail was the journey taken by hippies and others in the 1960s and 1970s from Europe overland to and from southern Asia, mainly India and Nepal. One of the key elements was traveling as cheaply as possible, mainly to extend the length of time away from home. As such, journeys were carried out by thumbing (hitchhiking), or cheap, private buses that travelled the route. There were also trains that traveled 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. From these cities, public or private transportation could then be obtained for the rest of the trip. These journeys evoked the 17th and 18th-century tradition of the Grand Tour.
Read more about Hippie Trail: The Route(s), Guides and Travelogues, New Trails
Famous quotes containing the words hippie and/or trail:
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)