The Travel Writer
I just finished reading “On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer” by Rick Steves. Kim bought it for me, I think Kim saw “Hippie” in the title and thought I would like it.
I did.
The book is the recent edited and now published version of the journal that the then 23-year-old kept on his 1978 trip traveling the “Hippie Trail” from Istanbul to Kathmandu which ultimately established Steves as a travel writer and in the travel business.
A travel writer…
This book has inspired me.
I have decided I want to be a travel writer.
Yup, I finally know what I want to do when I grow up.
A travel writer.
Right about now I am guessing some of you are thinking outloud to yourselves “something doesn’t make sense here.”
And you want to jump in and say,
“But Curt, you don’t go anywhere!”
“You don’t travel!”
Okay I recognize that that could be a problem.
As a travel writer, one does need to travel.
I suppose I could make it up.
Pretend that I traveled and get my information from the internet.
But that wouldn’t be right.
That would either make me a Fiction Writer…
Or a bullshitter.
Neither of which I want to be known as.
But this traveling thing is definitely a problem.
This is the same guy who just recently needed his eleven-year-old grandson Christian from Florida to help him get to Washington D.C. on the Metro.
To be fair however, I have traveled to Western PA and written about that.
And I have gone to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and written about that.
And I have gone to New Jersey and written about that.
Doesn’t that make me a travel writer?
Are there other places?
Well maybe for now I will just travel up to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine.
Then I might just take a hike out to the deck and enjoy the soothing sounds of the Koi pond waterfalls as I take in the beauty of the banana trees, the tall grasses, and the palm trees in my back yard, all the while communing with the local wildlife.
And contemplate my next adventure, planning out what my very own “Hippie Trail” might look like.
And thinking, I may have just traveled it.
Postscript:
Apparently in the 60’s and 70’s, maybe influenced greatly by the Beatles’ time in India in 1968, when the Beatles traveled to Rishikesh to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the “Hippie Trail” was established. Many, in the then counterculture, made the trip from Europe to Asia traveling through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and maybe further.
Their quest, to escape Western materialism and spiritual growth.
To find peace and love.
However, peace and love ended in 1979 when Iran experienced a revolution and Russia entered Afghanistan. That was the end of the Hippie Trail.
It was a quick read and entertaining. If you relate to that era you might like it too.
“We watched the English news which seems to be more of a daily reminder that instability reigns all over this corner of the earth. You can’t put a price tag on the value of being an American. Stability. I really wouldn’t want it any other way. I am spoiled.”
(From Rick Steves’ On the Hippie Trail, 1978)
