Date: November 25th, 2019 6:50 AM
Author: Mewling half-breed
it sounds unbelievable today. summary from a story in an old surfing magazine (surfing and travel had a lot of crossover back then - see the original endless summer, etc.):
-a group of 2 men and 3 girls fly from new york to london
-they buy a used volkswagon van near london which is somewhat cheaper because it's a "wrong-hand drive" model that a brit expat brought back from france. they spend some time having it tuned up and buying gear for the trip while enjoying springtime southern england
-they ferry the van over to france and stop by paris and smoke hash with other hippies (a repeated theme throughout this journey, it will turn out)
-they took a detour back up north to get to amsterdam to smoke more hash
-they swung through west germany down to munich (more hash), through austria, and encountered THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE TRIP at the yugoslav border, paying bribes and waiting for transit documents to be approved
-they didn't smoke hash in yugoslavia or bulgaria, but did again in istanbul
-they went south along turkey's mediterranean coast, crossed into pre-assad-era syria, crossed into lebanon to visit "the paris of the middle east" (beirut), then drove to damascus and across the desert to baghdad in pre-saddam iraq, stopping by 'al-Fallujah' along the way
-they had lots of fun in shah-era iran, stopping by tehran and the south caspian rainforest en route to afghanistan
-king zahir shah's afghanistan was LOADED with very fresh and strong hash, from herat to the khyber pass
-they passed into pre-division pakistan and spent some time in lahore before getting approval to cross into india
-they went north to visit indian kashmir before visiting delhi and calcutta and eventually crossing into east pakistan
-they sold the van in dhaka and flew to bangkok to smoke hash and party
-they flew to tokyo (no hash) then hawaii then back to the US
imagine doing that today. the other interesting thing is that even though they were filthy hippies, they had good mechanical skills, and repaired/modified their van a bunch of times when it ran into trouble.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4388438&forum_id=2...id#39168233)