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The Hippie Trail
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. Written in a clear, simple style, it provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who travelled eastwards. The book 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? It also considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts, and will appeal to those interested in the Trail or the 1960s counterculture, as well as students taking courses relating to the 1960s.
246 pages, Paperback
Published July 20, 2018
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592 people want to read
About the author
Sharif Gemie
23 books20 followersSharif Gemie is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of South Wales. He researches the history of marginalized and minority groups, particularly people who are caught between cultures.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 15, 2018
80 travellers. One unlike the other. Unique personalities, the majority adorned with peculiar looks-long hair, colourful clothes, ragged appearance. Some pulled by the magnanimity of the East's spirituality. Some on a hunt for the cheapest and most effective drugs. While some were on a quest to find love on the road, others had a deeper purpose - to find meaning in life. While some were on a quest to satisfy their hunger for travel, others had no reason at all. Some took the coach, while others simply hitchhiked. But, they all had one thing in common - the Hippie Trail.
He learned incessantly from the river. Above all, it taught him how to listen, to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinion.
The Hippie Trail by Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland put forths a never-before detailed history of the Hippie Trail. With insights from 80 travellers that traversed the path during the 1960s and 1970s, the duo dwells deep into the joys, fears and hardships the travellers encountered in their travels to the East. The book is divided into five sections, each discussing aspects that drove the travellers to the hippie trail, like drugs, love and sex, tourism, pilgrimage and the last section is a look into how hippies have been portrayed in novels, films and autobiographies.
The book began like a good smoke - delusional and promising- only to disperse off like one. The authors had a different approach to narrating the history of the Hippie trail. Instead of talking about each traveller's experience as a different story, they clubbed together similar experiences of each person under specific sections, which I feel was a brilliant way to pen the book. The introduction had everything to draw a reader to it. Well compiled facts, rightly timed anecdotes, catchy quotations, and most importantly, a looming curiosity about the Hippie Trail. But unfortunately, from the second section on, the spell wore off and I found it very hard to move from page to page.
The Hippie Trail by Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland is an enlightening read for travel enthusiasts and those who have an inkling towards historical accounts of travel. It clears several myths that have been circulated regarding hippies and the Hippie Trail.
He learned incessantly from the river. Above all, it taught him how to listen, to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinion.
The Hippie Trail by Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland put forths a never-before detailed history of the Hippie Trail. With insights from 80 travellers that traversed the path during the 1960s and 1970s, the duo dwells deep into the joys, fears and hardships the travellers encountered in their travels to the East. The book is divided into five sections, each discussing aspects that drove the travellers to the hippie trail, like drugs, love and sex, tourism, pilgrimage and the last section is a look into how hippies have been portrayed in novels, films and autobiographies.
The book began like a good smoke - delusional and promising- only to disperse off like one. The authors had a different approach to narrating the history of the Hippie trail. Instead of talking about each traveller's experience as a different story, they clubbed together similar experiences of each person under specific sections, which I feel was a brilliant way to pen the book. The introduction had everything to draw a reader to it. Well compiled facts, rightly timed anecdotes, catchy quotations, and most importantly, a looming curiosity about the Hippie Trail. But unfortunately, from the second section on, the spell wore off and I found it very hard to move from page to page.
The Hippie Trail by Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland is an enlightening read for travel enthusiasts and those who have an inkling towards historical accounts of travel. It clears several myths that have been circulated regarding hippies and the Hippie Trail.
April 23, 2021
This is a mediocre book about a fascinating era in travel history: in the 1960s and 1970s, it was possible for ordinary people to travel between Europe and India overland. Among those who made the journey were people looking for adventure, drugs or spirituality, whether they were freespirited types who made their way independently, or more timid travelers who preferred to ride together in a bus with others.
Historians Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland bill this as “the first history of the hippie trail”, but it is really only a book that ticks some boxes for their own academic career advancement, and it lacks the sort of detail and clear presentation that would satisfy those interested in this enchanting and romantic era.
Gemie & Ireland’s book is divided into five main chapters: 1) drugs and the trail, 2) sex and love on the road, 3) the argument over who is a “traveler” and who is a “tourist”, 4) travelers seeking Asian spirituality, and 5) media depictions of the trail.
The problem with the book is that it just leaves too much out to be a real history. Firstly, the hippie trail was an international phenomenon, it drew travelers from across Western Europe and also Yugoslavia. This survey, however, focuses almost entirely on UK travelers. The authors boast of having carried out interviews with veterans of the trail, but these were solely English subjects found through an advertisement placed in Private Eye. The authors also mined a large number of previous works written by trail participants, but they are almost entirely English ones, with just a couple of French ones. What about all the German, Dutch, Swedish, or Yugoslav writing on the trail?
Secondly, there is no chronological order to this book at all, no attempt to describe the evolution of the trail through the 15 years or so of its heyday. This book is, firstly, disappointingly lopsided towards the 1970s, but secondly, it can suddenly jump back to many years before that experienced readers will recognize as not the same era at all. The authors also stray from a focus on the trail as ordinarily defined, following an anecdote from India or Afghanistan with someone’s experiences in Morocco. The Balearic Isles or Morocco were definitely part of a wider travel scene at this time, but they way they are randomly mentioned here feels off-topic.
Nowhere do Gemie & Ireland lay out how the “hippie trail” was just a subset of the more general “overland trail”. Other histories of the Istanbul–Kathmandu route show how it was used by many Australians who needed to cheaply get to or from the UK before cheap plane travel, and who weren’t counterculture-identified or adventure-seeking at all, but this book lacks that wider context.
As an introduction to this era in history, I would recommend instead the oral history A Season in Heaven edited by David Tomory. About the only real value in Gemie & Ireland’s book is its bibliography that will point you to previous treatments of the trail, often more enjoyable than this book itself.
Historians Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland bill this as “the first history of the hippie trail”, but it is really only a book that ticks some boxes for their own academic career advancement, and it lacks the sort of detail and clear presentation that would satisfy those interested in this enchanting and romantic era.
Gemie & Ireland’s book is divided into five main chapters: 1) drugs and the trail, 2) sex and love on the road, 3) the argument over who is a “traveler” and who is a “tourist”, 4) travelers seeking Asian spirituality, and 5) media depictions of the trail.
The problem with the book is that it just leaves too much out to be a real history. Firstly, the hippie trail was an international phenomenon, it drew travelers from across Western Europe and also Yugoslavia. This survey, however, focuses almost entirely on UK travelers. The authors boast of having carried out interviews with veterans of the trail, but these were solely English subjects found through an advertisement placed in Private Eye. The authors also mined a large number of previous works written by trail participants, but they are almost entirely English ones, with just a couple of French ones. What about all the German, Dutch, Swedish, or Yugoslav writing on the trail?
Secondly, there is no chronological order to this book at all, no attempt to describe the evolution of the trail through the 15 years or so of its heyday. This book is, firstly, disappointingly lopsided towards the 1970s, but secondly, it can suddenly jump back to many years before that experienced readers will recognize as not the same era at all. The authors also stray from a focus on the trail as ordinarily defined, following an anecdote from India or Afghanistan with someone’s experiences in Morocco. The Balearic Isles or Morocco were definitely part of a wider travel scene at this time, but they way they are randomly mentioned here feels off-topic.
Nowhere do Gemie & Ireland lay out how the “hippie trail” was just a subset of the more general “overland trail”. Other histories of the Istanbul–Kathmandu route show how it was used by many Australians who needed to cheaply get to or from the UK before cheap plane travel, and who weren’t counterculture-identified or adventure-seeking at all, but this book lacks that wider context.
As an introduction to this era in history, I would recommend instead the oral history A Season in Heaven edited by David Tomory. About the only real value in Gemie & Ireland’s book is its bibliography that will point you to previous treatments of the trail, often more enjoyable than this book itself.
July 10, 2024
good old days of freedom, interesting read if you r interested in knowing about the rock n roll of the 70s and counterculture.
December 28, 2018
The Hippie Trail
Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland
Alephbook Co.
2018. Pp – 256.
Blurb-
Going beyond the dozens of personal memoirs and travellers’ accounts that have been written about the legendary overland route between the West and South Asia, the book records the joys and pains experienced by the huge numbers of (mostly) young hippies on their travels to India and other ‘points east’ such as Nepal and Afghanistan. Written in a clear, simple style, it goes deep into the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who made the journey. This account is structured around a few key questions: Were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs or was there something deeper that they were looking for? What was the truth about the love and sexual freedom that was supposed to be an integral part of the hippie subculture? Were they basically just budget tourists? Or were they pilgrims in thrall to the mysticism of the East? Besides an insightful analysis of the various aspects of the hippie phenomenon, the authors also take a look at how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts. In sum, The Hippie Trail should appeal to all those interested in a fascinating moment in cultural history and its far-reaching effects on the generations that followed.
Review-
An attempt to explain what all is wondered about the hippies and narrative that brings the reader closer to the group and their culture.
Descriptive, well researched, attractive and a one of its kind read, a 3.5 on 5.
#bookstagramindia #bookstagrammer #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #review #bookreview #readdreamrepeat #blogger #bookblogger #delhibookstagrammer #indianblogger #igreads #delhiblogger #unitedbookstagram #delhibookstagramfam #bookishfeatures #bookporn #booknerd #bookstagramfeature #newyear #newyearreads
57 down @htbrunch #htbrunchbookchallenge #BrunchBookChallenge #htbrunch
Sharif Gemie and Brian Ireland
Alephbook Co.
2018. Pp – 256.
Blurb-
Going beyond the dozens of personal memoirs and travellers’ accounts that have been written about the legendary overland route between the West and South Asia, the book records the joys and pains experienced by the huge numbers of (mostly) young hippies on their travels to India and other ‘points east’ such as Nepal and Afghanistan. Written in a clear, simple style, it goes deep into the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who made the journey. This account is structured around a few key questions: Were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs or was there something deeper that they were looking for? What was the truth about the love and sexual freedom that was supposed to be an integral part of the hippie subculture? Were they basically just budget tourists? Or were they pilgrims in thrall to the mysticism of the East? Besides an insightful analysis of the various aspects of the hippie phenomenon, the authors also take a look at how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts. In sum, The Hippie Trail should appeal to all those interested in a fascinating moment in cultural history and its far-reaching effects on the generations that followed.
Review-
An attempt to explain what all is wondered about the hippies and narrative that brings the reader closer to the group and their culture.
Descriptive, well researched, attractive and a one of its kind read, a 3.5 on 5.
#bookstagramindia #bookstagrammer #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #review #bookreview #readdreamrepeat #blogger #bookblogger #delhibookstagrammer #indianblogger #igreads #delhiblogger #unitedbookstagram #delhibookstagramfam #bookishfeatures #bookporn #booknerd #bookstagramfeature #newyear #newyearreads
57 down @htbrunch #htbrunchbookchallenge #BrunchBookChallenge #htbrunch
May 13, 2023
Oh, for me this was an amazing read! A wonderful gift from my sister.
It is the first researched and published book about what has been called "the hippie trail" - that movement of youth from Europe, USA and Australia to India and Nepal overland through eastern Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir as well as to Morocco in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Although I and two friends travelled as tourists at age 18 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Kashmir (June to August 1972), we saw the overland travelers, the hippies, during our journey. And while we stayed with an afghan family and later an Canadian family while in Afghanistan, we traveled on our own through Pakistan, India and Kashmir that summer.
So to read a book that describes those times and that kind of experience is amazing. I never come across anyone with whom I am discuss my experience in 1972 who can relate. But for me it was life changing, as so many of the interviewees in the book describe their experience.
I love the honestly and depth of the research undertaken to produce this report/book. The process of engagement in this quest feels totally transparent and honest by the authors, Gemie and Ireland. The timeframe of their focus is 1957-1978.
The research includes an extensive literature review followed by oral histories from interviews with travelers of the time who would have been in their 60s and 70s at the time of the interviews, and clear analysis and conclusions about what is learned. Four questions are the focus:
* were travelers simply motivated by a search for drugs?
* did they encounter love or sexual freedom in their travels?
* were they essentially just tourists?
* did they resemble pilgrims?
A final chapter considers how the travelers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts.
Eight pages of colour photos are included in the book.
This book captures a description of travel in the 1960s and 70s through parts of the world that are radically different from how they were back then. The hippie trail is closed by conflicts and insecurities in mainly of the countries linked along the route.
The book also gives a picture of how elusive it is to map or define the hippie trail as it included travels whose destinations included Kathmandu in Nepal, Goa in India, Bangkok in Thailand, and Morocco and all places east along the way.
Brings back so many memories of that summer of 1972 for me!
It is the first researched and published book about what has been called "the hippie trail" - that movement of youth from Europe, USA and Australia to India and Nepal overland through eastern Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir as well as to Morocco in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Although I and two friends travelled as tourists at age 18 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Kashmir (June to August 1972), we saw the overland travelers, the hippies, during our journey. And while we stayed with an afghan family and later an Canadian family while in Afghanistan, we traveled on our own through Pakistan, India and Kashmir that summer.
So to read a book that describes those times and that kind of experience is amazing. I never come across anyone with whom I am discuss my experience in 1972 who can relate. But for me it was life changing, as so many of the interviewees in the book describe their experience.
I love the honestly and depth of the research undertaken to produce this report/book. The process of engagement in this quest feels totally transparent and honest by the authors, Gemie and Ireland. The timeframe of their focus is 1957-1978.
The research includes an extensive literature review followed by oral histories from interviews with travelers of the time who would have been in their 60s and 70s at the time of the interviews, and clear analysis and conclusions about what is learned. Four questions are the focus:
* were travelers simply motivated by a search for drugs?
* did they encounter love or sexual freedom in their travels?
* were they essentially just tourists?
* did they resemble pilgrims?
A final chapter considers how the travelers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts.
Eight pages of colour photos are included in the book.
This book captures a description of travel in the 1960s and 70s through parts of the world that are radically different from how they were back then. The hippie trail is closed by conflicts and insecurities in mainly of the countries linked along the route.
The book also gives a picture of how elusive it is to map or define the hippie trail as it included travels whose destinations included Kathmandu in Nepal, Goa in India, Bangkok in Thailand, and Morocco and all places east along the way.
Brings back so many memories of that summer of 1972 for me!
July 4, 2023
A brief but fascinating history of the reality of Westerners going East in the 1960s and 1970s, which nicely balances perspectives to create a compelling summary. Just sad it wasn’t longer!
June 20, 2025
academic, factual, dry
Read
December 1, 2022Reads like an academic analysis but interesting.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews