Tuesday, September 3, 2024

On This Day, 50 Years Ago, I and 40 Swedes Stepped Onto Two Buses Heading for India

50 years ago -- September 3, 1974 -- I and 40 other young and naïve Swedes entered two old Scania buses who were to take us from Stockholm to New Delhi in six weeks. We were not hippies, just ordinary people, but we did travel on what was once called the Silk Road, and in the 1960s became known as the "Hippie Trail." I was 20, an atheist and politically radical, so I was definitively not looking to find a Guru or spiritual enlightenment in India. And I had no desire to end up on a rooftop in Kathmandu, smoking pot. I was interested in the world, and this was an opportunity that had opened, and didn't cost much, since we slept on the buses. You can read more about my 3 1/2-month journey in my new book - A Swede on the Hippie Trail (1974) which is now globally available on Amazon. 





Monday, September 2, 2024

Heading Home From India and Left Behind on Mount Damavand

After five weeks crisscrossing southern India, we met up in New Delhi, and the long road back to Sweden could start. We drove through Pakistan, through the Khyber Pass, and to Iran via Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. As we crossed Mount Damavand, Iran’s and Asia’s largest volcano, I was left behind in my long johns in the middle of the night. Read about it in “A Swede on the Hippie Trail.” 

 Sunset in Pakistan.
Towards the Khyber Pass.

Near Jalalabad.
The Darunta Dam on the Kabul River.
Afghanistan. Near Qalat in Zabur province.
Kids in eastern Turkey.
I don't have any photos from my adventure 
on Mount Damavand, but here is one 
from eastern Turkey. 



Sunday, September 1, 2024

Kerala as a Prism of India

After Hyderabad in Telangana, Hassan, Mysuru (Mysore), and Bengaluru (Bangalore) in Karnataka, Chennai (Madras) and Madurai in Tamil Nadu, we arrived in Cochin (Kochi) on the Malabar Coast in the state of Kerala. The first humans to settle Kerala followed the coastline according to the British historian Michael Wood.




”A Swede on the Hippie Trail" -- an ebook, paperback and hard cover. Find it on Amazon.