In 1976, Trevor Harrison embarked on an overland trip from Turkey to India, along a well-worn route popularly called the Hippie Trail. The Iranian Revolution and other regional conflicts shortly thereafter closed this route, but during the preceding two decades, millions of young Westerners made the journey in search of adventure, curiosity, and spiritual renewal, a journey whose cultural impact-and its myths-remain with us today.
This book is Harrison's safarnameh-a Persian word describing a travel account. Drawing extensively on observations written during the journey, Safarnameh explores the physical, psychological, and emotional impact of long-distance travel and its lingering echoes. Interwoven with Harrison's personal account are insights from in-depth interviews with forty-eight other travellers from around the world who made the same expedition during roughly the same period. Together, these voices amplify, confirm, and occasionally challenge prevailing images of the overland traveller. Harrison's own experience situates this remarkable journey within the broader historical, cultural, and socio-political context of the time.
Safarnameh is the story of Harrison's overland trip from Turkey to India, a route taken by millions of young people from Western countries during the 1960s and 1970s. Based extensively on written observations made at the time, the book explores the physical, psychological, and emotional impact of travelling and its lingering echoes.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Beginnings
2 Istanbul
3 Detained in Syria
4 Turkey Beyond Istanbul
5 In the Shah's Shadow
6 The Pearl of Khorasan
7 Wyhet
8 The Road to Kabul
9 Kabul
10 Into the Hindu Kush
11 The Khyber Pass
12 Echoes of the Raj
13 Into India
14 From Agra to Benares
15 Bombay
16 Moira
17 The End of the Trail
18 You Can Never Go Home Again
Afterword
A Note on Interviews and Surveys
Bibliography
