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.