The hippie trail was the name given to a migration of young people from across the globe who felt a need to go east and find something different. Typically, it was an overland journey from Europe to India and or beyond. Most of the journeys passed through Istanbul. There were a few routes from Istanbul east. One took travelers through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. Another route could take people to Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran and then to Pakistan and eventually India and Nepal. By far the most travelers stopped in India, but some continued east farther into Southeast Asia and even the Far East.
Young people’s desire to travel to the east was greatly influenced by the Beatles, who famously spent time in India in the 1960s. That eastward flow stopped rather abruptly in the late 1970s with the Islamic revolution in Iran and the war between Russia and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Many also traveled for access to drugs such as hashish. Others looked for spiritual enlightenment, and many more wanted and needed a type of freedom in everyday life that wasn’t available in the United States or Europe. Some went just because other people were doing it, and a few simply had adventure in their blood and were curious to see more of the world.
Most traveled the 6,500 miles by bus. Some of those bus trips were organized by young entrepreneurs who took a few or many per ride, depending upon whether the bus was a VW van or a large, fifty-person vehicle. Others traveled by car or motorbike; some even tried to hitchhike. Planes were too expensive and trains scarce and unreliable. There were many horror stories about all these forms of transportation breaking down at different parts of the journey. And often the outcome was either sit a month in the desert waiting for parts or, if the driver just gave up and walked away, walk however many miles to a town and wait for someone to pass through who would give you a ride east.
Years after I was there, The Pudding Shop did get a lot of international attention when it was included in the scary, based-on-real-events movie, Midnight Express. Billy Hayes, a young American played by actor Brad Davis, was initially caught with drugs in Turkey. The police gave him an opportunity to help his cause by wearing a wire and going to The Pudding Shop (where he had made his original drug connection) to see if he could identify those involved or shake out any others. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t succeed, and he ended up spending a long harrowing time behind bars.
One night, at about 10:30, Doug and I were sitting in the bar of the Istanbul Hilton after a pleasant American dinner of hamburgers, fries, Pepsis and apple pie. It cost us more for this meal by far than any other Turkish meal we’d had, but that hamburger was my first American meal in two weeks and it was worth it. It also helped that after fourteen days of straight rain, it was sunny.
Earlier that day I had gotten my hands on some recent copies of the International Herald Tribune, the English-language paper readily available when you were traveling overseas (It was renamed The International New York Times in 2013.) I was happy to get news about the States, especially sports news, but a comic strip called “Rip Kirby” also caught my eye. Kirby was an adventurer/detective looking for the elusive Elysian Fields—the mythological home of an afterlife where Greek heroes were given immortality and vast treasure—Rip was looking for the treasure.
Should I look for the Elysian Fields? At dinner, Doug and I tossed around possible new travel plans but becoming a Rip Kirby didn’t make the list. Going east was out; we had already decided that. Traveling north looked almost as bleak, since we would have to cross Bulgaria again. We couldn’t risk meeting our border guard, Borislav again, giving him another chance to lock up those two American spies. Going back the way we had just come seemed so “been there, done that.” That left south, down to Athens, one of the most historic cities in the world, then perhaps on to the Greek Islands. Then maybe I could become a Rip Kirby—my own Elysian Fields adventure could be waiting for me in Greece.
But I had no money. I had arrived in Paris with about $950, enough, I thought, to last me a month or so before I started collecting a paycheck. I had figured if Jake Barnes could get a job, so could I. That was the plan, and there was no Plan B. It never crossed my mind that I would fail. With only a one-way ticket to Paris, there was no room not to succeed. It was becoming apparent that I was kind of naive—stupid—to have made a bet on myself like that.
Well, Paris was history, as was my brilliant (I still think it was brilliant) idea to become a clothing entrepreneur, letting me extend my stay in Europe indefinitely. Although I had been frugal, Paris is one of the most expensive cities in the world. And although our accommodations on the Orient Express were, for the most part, less than satisfactory, the trip from Paris to Istanbul had taken almost a third of the cash I had come with. After some quick calculations, I realized that if we decided to take another train south to Athens and stayed for even a few days there, I would have barely enough to get to an Icelandic departure city and buy a cheap ticket home.
My plan had been to live in Paris; the more likely scenario was I that would be returning to the States after a month in Europe. With failures at every turn, going back the same person I was when I left was looking inevitable, I was going back with no adventures and no stories to tell about them. No living the life of Jake Barnes or Larry Darrell, no apartment overlooking the Seine, no path to India and enlightenment. I was in this world of crusaders and hippies, running out of money, with few prospects. I could’ve bought an elephant, but what would I do with an elephant…?
As I drank my beer and continued wallowing in self-pity, I glanced over the shoulder of a patron at the next table who was reading a Turkish newspaper. I got Doug’s attention and pointed—incredible! On the front-page were pictures of what looked to be the safe landing of Apollo 13. We couldn’t read the paper, of course, but there sure were a lot of smiling faces in those photos. Just the wonder of it cheered me up and sent me back to trying to figure out a plan.
Doug and I ordered more beers and went back to planning our next move. Doug felt Monday would be the best day for us to head south. He had decided which guy in the Grand Bazaar had the best hashish pipes, and he was sure he had negotiated the best price. But the Bazaar was closed on Sundays, so we had to wait two days to leave. We would buy our tickets Monday morning, then go to the Bazaar and buy some pipes. Doug had been urging me to buy a couple. Hashish was not my thing, but I could see they were unique. If I could get them home in one piece, I could probably sell them for a lot more than we had paid.
Before we returned to our hotel, I questioned Doug again about our decision not to try to get to India. I filled him in on some news I had gathered at the Pudding Shop. We could possibly get a ride in a truck or a Volkswagen bus to India, I had learned, although a couple of people indicated it could take three weeks to two months for the trip. And that was if whatever vehicle we started out in made it all the way. One couple from Spain, just back, said they were stranded in Baghdad for a month waiting for a truck part. Doug was intrigued: “Maybe we should reconsider?”
I believed Doug had it in him to travel like that. He had spent about a week at Woodstock, dealing with that craziness, the year before. When I had seen the pictures on TV of that miserable mess they gave me the shakes. How could those people stand it, all packed together, dirty, smelly, hungry, drugged-out day and night? And it rained most of the days the music was playing! I didn’t have the desire to go anywhere near that. Give me a nice suit, a crisp, collared shirt, and good leather shoes, worn in a nightclub with a drink in hand instead.
And so, in the end, after even more beers, we made our final decision. Forget India and go south to Athens. I’m pretty sure Rip Kirby would have gone for trekking to India and adventure, but, maybe, just maybe, adventure was waiting for me in Athens.
We slept until noon the next day. Doug needed to find some things for the next leg of our trip. I had decided that besides the handwritten journal I was keeping about my trip, I should buy a sketchbook so I could draw some of the wonderful things I was seeing. After I bought one at the Bazaar, I wandered into a beautiful hidden park with benches offering a clear view of the Blue Mosque. Before I started drawing, I copied a couple of poems I had written on scrap paper while on the train. The sketchbook’s graph paper background was perfect for both.
After an hour or so of sketching the mosque, I had begun to draw a crowd. Maybe as many as ten to twelve men, women