The Hippie Trail and “A Season in Heaven”

Like a lot of people who came of age in the not-too-inspiring Reagan-era ‘80s, I’ve had plenty of moments when I wished I’d grown up in the seemingly far-more-interesting ‘60s. Likewise, the backpacker in me sometimes wishes I’d been a young traveler ambling across Asia in the ‘60s and ‘70s on the Hippie Trail, back in the days before Lonely Planet had explained how to do it, back when the world seemed to be opening up to independent travel for the first time. But was it all that it seems? On Vagablogging, Rolf Potts takes up the topic in a review of a new book about the Hippie Trail, David Tomory’s “A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu.” Tomory interviewed 35 travelers for the book. The result? “[I]t vividly captures the mindset of the young people who dropped all in the ‘60s and ‘70 to optimistically wander across Asia,” Potts writes.

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