Product Description

In the 1960s hundreds of thousands of young Westerners, inspired by Kerouac and the Beatles, blazed the 'hippie trail' overland from Istanbul to Kathmandu in search of enlightenment and a bit of cheap dope. Since the Summer of Love, the countries that offered so much to these dreamers have confronted the full force of modernity and transformed from worlds of Western fantasy to political minefields. Through a landscape of breathtaking beauty Rory MacLean retraces the path of the once well-worn 'hippie trail' from Turkey to Iran, Afghanistan to Pakistan, India to Nepal, meeting trail veterans and locals on his way, and relives wide-eyed adventures as he witnesses a world of extraordinary and terrifying transformation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71113 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
Utterly absorbing; if you read only one travel book this year, this should be it (Chasing the Monsoon )

A disturbing, gripping and intensely passionate story (Esther Freud )

Rory MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of his generation (Courtesans )

Spectator
`The magical beauty of MacLean's prose and the vividness of his
descriptions are . . . mind-blowing'

Daily Mail
'Original and fascinating. The freaks' trail to Nirvana has found
its most enthusiastic and expressive historian yet'

Customer Reviews

A new Nicoles Bouvier?
It is an understatement to say that I have devoured "Magic Bus" !
A Frenchman (so sorry for my broken English !) in my fifties now, the book took me back to my twenties.
In 1973 I made it to Varanasi (then Banaras) with two friends in a battered old Peugeot 404 station wagon in three weeks time. I am still very much influenced by this era, its culture and its extraordinary musical creativity.
I haver rediscovered all that in "Magic Bus" thanks to Rory MacLean who is a travel-writer of the calibre of Nicolas Bouvier.

Time-travelling on the hippie trail
Thanks to Rory Maclean the bus still runs, and I was able to catch it a generation and a half after the departure of the original Intrepids to the once-wild East. That East that was the world of dreams for a tired Europe whose kids desparately needed vision and freshness, for whom there was nothing at home that could hold the imagination, and whose parents' lives had been consumed and formed in the horror of war, the collapse of empire, incredible technological changes and the struggle to hang onto something familiar.

Rory Maclean balances the sentiment of the original journeys, thousands of them, gained by a brave attempt to trace their route under very changed, and more dangerous circumstances than they once were, with an updated perspective on the trail as it appears today. Those early travellers were gullible, naive and inexperienced. They were also passionate and committed to a new world of real relations - and of pleasure.

It may be that the passage of those early hippies laid something of the foundations for the present tensions and unhealthy religious and political conditions. Yet this too will pass. Maclean's account, meanwhile, consists in the main of encounters along the way with a brilliant Afghan rug of characters, from the ancient hippie soulmate he meets in Turkey to the Iranian city guide who opens his mind behind closed doors, the Englishman who converted to Islam in Pakistan and created for himself a spiritual path from the land and the people and the ecstasy of the meeting. Old hippies, musicians, their admirers along the way, NGO employees who wished they had been part of it... they are all here. And in each case there is a true encounter, a meeting of minds - surely the purpose of all travel, then and now and henceforth.

For anybody who did not travel on the first trail, this is a superb synthesis of many strands that gives a good picture of how it was. For anybody who has visions of a closer world and a new paradigm for living, this account shows much of what was achieved before, and some of the mistakes, and inspires one to try again. For those who did travel the Trail, I doubt that they will have much to argue with Maclean about.

Wonderful read
Many books have been written about the sixties, but Rory Macleans "Magic Bus" is the first to my knowledge which describes the journey many thousands of us made in those tumultuous years, overland from Istanbul to Kathmandu. The author retraces the route, describing with accuracy and humour the old haunts that many of us knew so well. From the Pudding Shop in the shadow of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Amir Kabir in Tehran, the cafes on Chicken Street in Kabul, the magnificient statues of Buddha in Bamyian tragically destroyed by the Taliban, to the dope filled dives of Freak Street in Kathmandu. For me the book brought the memories flooding back as I am sure it would for others familiar with the "hippy trail" But the book is not just for those who made that journey in the sixties and seventies, it's a fascinating travelogue in its own right, a piece of our cultural and social history, and a wonderful description of an era and a journey which will never be repeated in quite the same way. A five star read.