Hydrolife Magazine August/September 2017 [USA Edition]

In the late 1960s through to the end of the 1970s, hundreds
of thousands of counter-culture youth embarked on
a voyage along the now-legendary Hippie Trail. The
overland route loosely traced the footsteps of both
Alexander the Great and the Silk Road. Starting at the
edge of the European continent in Istanbul, Turkey, the
Hippie Trail meandered through Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, and Nepal, where it reached its
conclusion in Kathmandu.
Winding across Asia, these mercurial vagabonds
abandoned the materialistic Cold War mindsets of the
United States, Western Europe, and Australia. They
hoped to be transformed by the foreign cultures of the
region; to discover something spiritually palpable in an
era wrought with war and civil unrest. In their travels,
the trail’s eccentric pioneers infused their deep mistrust
for the establishment with a sense of adventure, writes
Agnieszka Sobocinska in her article “Following the
Hippie Sahibs.” It gave birth to the contemporary notion
of “alternative travel,” which was grounded in ideals of
culturally genuine travel experiences. In their attempts
to experience the locales of the Hippie Trail more
holistically than with traditional traveling, voyagers
toured about on a tight budget and absorbed all they
needed from local people along the way.
Perhaps the most common social cord between these
starry-eyed youth and the populaces of western Asia
came in the form of marijuana use. Not surprisingly, as
Boštjan Kravanja writes in his review of the book Thai
Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the
Marijuana Trade, the term “Hippie Trail.” is often used
synonymously with the term “hash route” A large reason
for the association of cannabis and the hippie trail is
the fact that areas along the route—most notably in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India—provide exceptional
environments for growing cannabis plants. These
regions of the Himalayan foothills feature hot, dry
summers with an abundance of sunshine.
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