The Hippie Trail: A History

This is the first history of the hippie trail. It records the joys and pains of budget travel to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ’points east’ in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s written in a clear, simple style, yet provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of those hundreds of thousands of who travelled eastwards.

The work is structured around four key debates: were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs? Did they encounter love or sexual freedom on the road? Were they basically just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? Finally a fifth chapter considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts.

This book has two main audiences in mind: firstly, a broad audience of those interested in the trail or the 1960s counterculture; secondly, students taking courses concerning the 1960s.