Strange Bewildering Time
Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.
In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme, Afghanistan lay at peace, and city streets from Turkey to India teemed with unrest. Within a year, many of the places he visited would become inaccessible to foreign travellers.
Drawing from the tattered notebooks he filled as a youthful wanderer, Abley brings his kaleidoscope of experiences back to life with vivid detail: dancing in a Turkish disco, clambering across a glacier in Kashmir, travelling by train among Baluchi tribesmen who smuggled kitchen appliances over international borders. He also reflects on the impact of the Hippie Trail and the illusions of those who journeyed along it. The lively immediacy of Abley’s journals combined with the measured wisdom of his mature, contemporary voice provides rich insight, bringing vibrant witness and historical perspective to this beautifully written portrait of a region during a time of irrevocable change.
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"When I set off for Istanbul, I was twenty-two and greedy for enlightenment," writes journalist Abley (The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind) in this poetic memoir. In 1978, Abley took a break from his studies at Oxford University to travel from Turkey to Nepal with his friend Clare. For Abley, the three-month trip offered an irresistible allure, but his expectations soon clashed with reality: rising tensions between the Turks and the Kurds (at the time of their visit to central Turkey, the government denied the existence of the Kurds) and political unrest in Kabul (a coup had taken place, and Afghanistan's borders were closed) put a damper on his optimism. Still, Abley and Clare befriended other travelers, explored the underground city of Kaymakli, and attended a Turkish disco. With vivid descriptions (on riding a bus to reach Kashmir Valley: "The air smelled delicious: mingled scents of cedars, pines, and alpine flowers in the precipitous green meadows") and frank reflections ("Privilege allowed us to ignore the daily lives of the local people we noticed along the way"), Abley gracefully captures a sense of his youthful innocence. Readers will marvel at this nostalgic travelogue.
