The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 August 2011
by Rory MacLean
In Road to Katmandu, Patrick Marnham gave us an immediate first-person account of a trip from Istanbul to Kathmandu, along the Hippie Highway of the 1960s. That book was first published in 1971. Thirty-five years later, Rory MacLean retraced the steps of so many thousands (some say as many as two million) hippies who made the journey seeking another way of looking at and living in the world. What results is this thoughtful and reflective travel memoir. It is a common belief these days that the hippie movement of the sixties and seventies was a failure. That depends on one's perspective, though, and on one's political opinions. There were many aspects of the progressive movement of that era. Everything from our fashions to our medical care options have been affected by the experimentation of those days. In some aspects, the movement failed (governmental transformation, a true return to ecological integration). In others, we are still living with its successes (women's rights, environmental stewardship, organic foods, skepticism of government, civil rights, some good music). As dismissive as some people are of the times and the people who shaped them, there is no doubt that the era had a profound impact on our world. One aspect of that impact was the spiritual and cultural curiosity among the young and mobile. There were many pilgrimages. One massive movement was among European and American hippies who took to the overland trail between Istanbul and India, with destinations in Nepal, India and Southeast Asia. Rory MacLean, in this book published in 2006, retraces the overland route, in search of the legacy of the travelers he calls "intrepids". And yet this is no nostalgia trip. MacLean is a sensitive observer of people and places. He seeks the lingering affects of the movement of Westerners through this exotic and alien landscape. He is skeptical of the high cultural ambitions of that time, but also unwilling to dismiss this migration wholesale. While the travelers largely touted an anti-materialist philosophy, they yet brought with them their culture, which was as alien and often as appealing to the people they encountered as the spiritual exoticism was to them. They also brought a culture of individualism to a world steeped in tribal and family tradition. The collision was not destined to be a smooth one. The hippies came to take what they could of Hindu, Buddhist and even Islamic culture. The peoples of Asia were willing to take the travelers' money, some of their ideas, and develop their own cultural and material yearnings. It wasn't likely that either side would ever fully understand the other. MacLean travels through troubled nations and sees some of the amazing cultural sites the hippies visited. And he sees them transformed by the intervening decades of war, conflict, material development and global tourism. Sometimes, he acknowledges that negative impacts can be traced to the hippie travelers. Other times, he can see the more subtle cultural layers at play. Sometimes the influence of the West is obvious, as in Afghanistan, where he dances to the hippie anthem Aquarius with a group of soldiers at the Bagram base. In other places, the affects are more complex, such as Iran, where generations of history have left the country ideologically confused and yearning for a new revolution. MacLean has a gift of weaving personal stories of residents and travelers into the travelogue of landscape and buildings. He encounters old hippies with amazing stories to tell. One, in particular, a septuagenarian named Penny, is his guide on the early part of the journey, and helps point him to the contradictions of the Kathmandu paradise the hippies were seeking. His trip ends in Goa, India, which is still a destination for neo-hippies today. There, he reflects on the journey and the act of travel writing, touching on the notion that travel writing itself (with guides like Overland to India and Lonely Planet) has helped to transform the world from a vast unknown to a vast collection of "discovered" places. He struggles with the conflict between nostalgia and loss, and the acceptance of the ever changing landscape of human life. The book is alternately fascinating and beautiful, colored with history but much more alive in the present day world its author describes. Highly recommended.
See Also: [Road to Katmandu by Patrick Marnham]