The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 30 July 2011
by Patrick Marnham
We hear about them a lot in today's news, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. They are far away and exotic lands. Americans think they know more about them now, and, in general, aren't very happy with what they do know. That's due to the wars we are fighting over there, the unjustified one we started and the ones into which we have been drawn. These lands are considered dangerous places for Americans these days. They're not places you would necessarily think of when planning your next vacation, unless you're a very much an adventurer. But they are places, whole and complete cultures, a different world than the one to which we are accustomed.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a subculture of the hippie movement had a fascination with all things Eastern, the philosophies, religions and cultures of India and Nepal. The cheap way to get there, and the way that would give the traveler the cachet of having earned the spiritual destination, was to go overland from Instanbul, through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, places any young American would be half crazy to walk through today. But back then, it was the Hippie Highway, a route to enlightenment. European and American youth streamed across Asia to pursue a spiritual quest, or to just break free of the cultural straits of the West. This book is the story of one young British journalist's journey on that highway. It is given to the literary excesses of youth, with a sprawling but not particularly detailed narrative of flophouses, roadside camps, bazaars, cramped buses and hitchhiking across desert and mountain. It is the edgy narrative of young adventurers and an uneven portrayal of the lands through which they travel. This review refers to the first paperback edition of this book, from 1971 (which was Marnham's first book). A later edition reflects more on the fact that Western culture left a streak across Asia that contributed to a Middle-Eastern and Asian perceptions of the West and its decadence (thousands of young, relatively wealthy, mostly white, travelers with lots of free time to critique the culture from which they sprang). This earlier edition has less of this more subtle understanding. But it is also a document of a time and a place, a cultural movement in the West, one that questioned the received wisdom of capitalist acquisition of happiness, and sought a viable spiritual alternative. Some of the more competent explorers no doubt traveled East and remained, or at least came away more changed by their experience than they expected. Others confronted the limits of their assumptions about exotic lands, and were found wanting.
The book is semi-fictional, a streamlined diary of a long and arduous trip, dependent on the kindness of the peoples they encountered. One character, Rat, is acknowledged to have been a composite of several overlanders the author encountered on the highway. The book is an interesting journey, though somewhat tedious at times, as it must have been for the travelers: hot, dirty, hungry and often looked upon with a severe foreign gaze. There is youthful enthusiasm about the trip, but there is an acknowledgment that these travelers are also a species of invader (there is also the assertion that these young people are nothing like the package tourists crossing the continent in air-conditioned buses). The encounters seem like small confrontations without clear resolution. But the travelers do manage to negotiate their way across thousands of miles of harsh territory. Unlike many travel books of today, there is refreshingly little handwringing about the clash of cultures and a Westerner's place in Asia. The pace of the trip varies. We spend time in Afghanistan, but we streak across Pakistan and down into sweltering and vibrant India. In the end Rat is seeking paradise in Kathmandu, as so many thousands did. Marnham needs to leave us thinking that the trip was worth it. Maybe Rat will find something there. In any case, Kathmandu is depicted as approaching that hippie ideal, despite the flaws Marnham has the wit to notice. This is not a long book (just 178 pages), but it requires some patience from its readers. It is a rewarding journey, dusty and vibrant, but probably not quite as rewarding as the actual experience of that road in the sixties.