Odyssey: Ten Years on the Hippie Trail

From Kansas to Kathmandu, from mountain to beach, jungle to city-street, jail to monastery, palatial estate to park-bench, psychopaths to gurus, from heart-break and back to love again, our journeyer met with all these and much more in this engrossing tale of not just travel but of a life consciously unfolding. Casting his fate to the wind he set out, with little money but a shaky confidence that he'd find ways and means of survival when his bankroll hit bottom – which didn't take long. Being carried by a strong desire and determination to see the world he persevered, melting obstacles with an ability to spot an opportunity or to to sink into, or to wait out, a situation. Choosing to shun scamming, smuggling or fruit-picking in favor of creative and artistic means to earn his living he kept some cash in his pocket – most of the time. And by endeavoring to do only what he enjoyed doing, and to keep company only with those of whom he had a high regard, he found in this an all-round viable formula that proved to work well for most everything in general.During lengthy stretches in villages, jungles and beaches of Central America, and with nomads of the Moroccan Sahara sand dunes, a family of wandering spiritual 'sadhus' on the banks of the Ganges in India, holding a position as cook and general manager in a charming backpacker hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan - after crossing that country by horseback. Thus, more than mere survival he thrived, refusing to regard his own lack of funds as 'poverty.'Throughout the journey his path would cross and intertwine with the people of his own leaning, the 'hippies' on the trail, which during this era were legion.Many mysterious interventions of destiny would arise, presenting ranges of circumstance from idyllic to agonizingly stressful, but all would impart valuable life-lessons and rich experience to this seeker of anything and everything that would add to his accumulation of knowledge – knowledge of being human, of being alive. He would add to his own involvements insightful observations of others whose existence differed greatly from his own, and would treasure absolutely all of it as spiritual experience.