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Abrams on the Hippie Trail: The Short and the Long of It

© Bernd Wechner

I’ve been collecting and reviewing hitch-hiking literature for over 5 years now. I’ve shared with you the written accounts of decade long global hitches, penniless trans-Asian and American hitches, pre-war, post-war, short and long, the literature isn’t abundant but it’s not exactly thin on the ground either. Then there are the volumes in my library I’ve not reviewed (yet).

Over those years I’d met a good few old men who’d hitched Europe to Asia in the ‘60s or ‘70s along what was called the Hippie Trail. They forged an overland trail from Britain to Australia, collecting in noticeable numbers in decisive spots like Istanbul, Kathmandu, Goa. They left an indelible mark on Kathmandu which still has a street dedicated to their memory (Freak Street).

The era has fascinated me for a long while, but I couldn’t pin it down easily. I’d meant to interview some of these older men some time, quiz them in more detail on some of their memories, their experiences, but they always slipped through my hands somehow. Shifting priorities, my motion and theirs through space and time all denied me the chance – in theory it’s not a very difficult theme to research after all, participants are abundant and mostly still alive.

Never have I laid hands on a written account from one of these thumbers. There were not many writers among them it seems.

Steven Abrams changed that. He dropped me a line over a year ago pointing to his on-line diary. He’s been typing it for over 7 years now, from his extensive notes of the time. He was one of those hippies, thumbing from Liverpool to Australia in 1968/69 . Well he wasn’t a hippie really, not even close, more of a proper young lad with a polite streak of larrikinism I’d say, but he kept a diligent, arguably pedantic diary of the trip – quite probably because he wasn’t a hippie (or he might have spun off volumes of acid poetry instead I guess).

His diary is quite a tome, in fact an epic according to the Fiction Factor, with its roughly 140,000 words. Far too long for convenient or comfortable on-line consumption. It’s longer than your average novel, and broken into about 20 chunky rambling chapters, one for each country on the way. Steven’s trying to make it easy for us, providing PDF downloads to print, take home and read in a more convenient format than hours of bleary-eyed screen staring. Even on paper though, I’ll warn you, it’s a slog to read through.

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