The golden age of the 'Hippie Trail'
Roger Crutchley
published : 8 Sep 2019 at 04:00

Travelling long distances overland has always captured the imagination and it seems the passion still remains. Three Land Rovers stopped over in Bangkok earlier this week in what is being called "The Last Expedition" which is taking on the more than 14,000km journey overland from Singapore to London.

This mission is essentially a tribute to the 1955 Oxford and Cambridge expedition, which was the first to travel this route, but in the opposite direction, starting in London. One of the Land Rovers, the "Oxford" from the original expedition 64 years ago, is also being used in this current venture. They should be in Myanmar now, having travelled via Nakhon Sawan and Mae Sot. May they have a safe journey.

The late 1960s and 70s was the "golden age of overland travel" with backpackers taking what became known as the "Hippie Trail" from London through to Asia.

A surprising number of expats still living in Thailand came out here at that time via the overland trail. In the early 1970s I shared a house in Sukhumvit with Julian Spindler and Mike Berry, shortly after they had driven their Land Rover, registration SMO 147, from England. According to Julian, "Smo", as the vehicle became affectionately known at our Soi 8 abode, was "a 1957 long wheel base Land Rover" with a deep orange colour.

I enjoyed quite a few rides aboard Smo in Bangkok during those early days and must admit I wouldn't have had the stamina to travel thousands of miles aboard it across Europe and Asia.

The Asian overland adventures ground to a halt in the late 1970s as a result of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Travelling overland in those days was quite different to current times. There was no Lonely Planet book to consult, no internet and no Trip Advisor. So you learnt things by word of mouth and from messages left on notice boards in budget hotels encountered on route...
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opi ... ppie-trail

My first overland trip London- Kathmandu
was 1974

Harold Stevens did this trip in 1965


The authors covered 42,252 tortuous miles from New York City to France, south to Spain, across North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Panama, and finally back to New York to break all previous records for driving non-repetitive mileage

....There was no Lonely Planet book to consult, no internet and no Trip Advisor. So you learnt things by word of mouth and from messages left on notice boards in budget hotels encountered on route..

what made it an adventure..

pick up the book that started it all, a great read and dam it was cheap to travel back than..
amazon has it as an ebook, or send me a pm and i'll send it to ya

Across Asia on the Cheap was written after a trip across Asia that Lonely Planet founders (Terry and Maureen) made in 1972. The trip was the classic overland hippie trail that went from London to Sydney. The guide covers the the bulk of the trail from Istanbul to Indonesia and Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), the jumping off point to Australia.

It’s a fascinating read to see how travel in Asia has changed over the last 40 years. The prices have of course changed (though some items are still almost the same), and where you could go has changed as well. When this was written you could travel freely in Afghanistan while North Vietnam was strictly off limits.

The Wheelers said they travelled for about 5 and a half months with $1200USD between them. That works out to about $109 each per month.

On of the High lights of my trip in '74 was Afghanistan, where we stayed at the intercontinental Hotel ( the Best hotel at the time in Kabul) for free as I had been in school with the owners daughter,who then took us by 4wd up to Bamyan