Hungering for Truth

Afghanistan 50 years ago was a much different country than it is today, Then it was a fairly stable monarchy under King Zahir Shah, who had reigned since 1933. He would be toppled in a coup in 1973. The scenery in Afghanistan was wild and mostly desolate. Afghanistan was at the crossroads of the ancient world. In the past, the land had been conquered by the likes of Darius I of Babylonia, Alexander the Great, and Ghengis Khan. More on that later.

The town of Herat was quite lovely, almost all bazaar and shops for clothing, carpets, and brass. There were several ruins of old castles, one of which is supposedly built on the site of a fort constructed by Alexander the Great in about BC 330. It was a complete ruin 50 years ago; since then a great deal of restoration has taken place. I also visited the Great Blue Mosque; construction on the mosque began in AD 1200. The pace of life in Herat was slow. Many men went to the tea shops, drank tea and smoked hashish all day, maybe play some music; when tired there were large carpeted platforms where they could crash.

We stayed in Herat for three days and then headed east to Kandahar. I honestly don’t remember much about the two days we spent in Kandahar, and I didn’t say anything about it in the letters that my parents and friends saved. From Kandahar we headed east again to the capital, Kabul, where we stayed for a couple days.

I visited the National Museum, which housed treasures that I saw then but which no one today will ever see because most of the collection was either looted or destroyed by the Taliban (because of Hindu or Buddhist imagery). The astounding diversity of the collection resulted from Afghanistan’s position on the ancient Silk Road between Europe and Asia. The museum had a collection of Greek and Roman coins, one of the finest in the world. After 50 years, I recall few of the details but remember being blown away by the breadth and beauty of the collection.

My traveling companions and I took an amazing side trip from Kabul before heading across the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and then on to India, but that deserves an entire post of its own.

After spending a night under the stars, we were ready for crossing the border into Afghanistan. Actually, we weren’t at all ready for what was to follow. Fortunately, my mom and dad kept all my letters home as did some close friends of mine; these helped jog my memory.

The “system” at the Afghan border was unbelievable. We submitted our passports in a room with two desks. A man at the first desk checked in the passports and then placed them on the second desk—anywhere on the other desk. A customs officer from an inner office came, took a handful of random passports into the inner office and then called the passport owners in to interview them before stamping their passports. I think you can see the weakness of this “system”. People who handed in passports at the same time could wait as short as five minutes or as long as hours to be called into the inner office.

Since we were all traveling together, our drivers didn’t want want to leave anyone behind. The driver of the vehicle I was riding in (a German doctor) finally reached the limit of his patience. He strode up to the second desk, rifled through the passports, and pulled out all the passports of those traveling in his vehicle. He then barged into the inner office and shoved the passports at the border official. I was watching in horror, imagining all kinds of horrific scenarios, one of which included all of us in an Afghan jail. To my great surprise, the doctor emerged alive with all our passports stamped. I never asked if money exchanged hands.

Once we were all across the border into Afghanistan, we drove to Harat, the closest city of any size, about 90 miles from the border. Once in Herat, our breakneck pace of travel came to an abrupt halt. We found a reasonably priced clean hotel (less than $1 per night). I was beginning to learn what was fairly safe to eat – basically anything cooked to death, such as delicious, fresh flatbread and kebabs. It was delightful to look forward to several days of rest rather than constant travel. Recalling that I was a hippie and an unbeliever, it won’t surprise you to learn that those days were spent in a haze of Afghan hashish, which was cheap, potent, and legal.

I realize that I’ve said very little so far about my spiritual quest. The reason is fairly straightforward. The breakneck pace of the trip thus far and the barrage of new sights and sounds (and smells) left me totally distracted. I haven’t mentioned my initial plan once I arrived in India. I had become fascinated with an Indian guru (spiritual teacher) – Sathya Sai Baba. Sai Baba was noted for his apparently genuine ability to materialize holy ash and small pieces of jewelry out of thin air. His ashram (spiritual center) in southern India had attracted many Westerners as well as Asians. It was my plan to head to Sai Baba’s ashram. Looking back, I’m glad that God had other, far better plans for me.

By the time we got to the Iranian border, I was feeling pretty marginal. Having abdominal cramps while traveling by bus and having to use filthy squatty potties when the bus stopped was extremely unpleasant. The border crossing into Iran was fairly smooth; this was back in the day when the Shah was still in power and the US had a good relationship with Iran.

In Bazargan, just across the border, my English friend Peter and I got a motor coach headed for Tehran by way of Tabriz. I think it would have been a fairly enjoyable trip if I hadn’t been feeling so marginal. Once in Tehran, I found a reputable clinic and was able to get some meds to help me get back to health, including a shot of gamma globulin to boost my immune system and anti-malarial drugs for India. Peter and I only stayed a day in Tehran. I was feeling marginally better, so we decided to push on to Mashad in eastern Iran, not far from the border with Afghanistan. If anything, the scenery in Iran was even more wild and desolate than in eastern Turkey.

In Mashad, Peter and I met up with three German couples in three VW microbuses traveling in caravan, and we were able to get a ride with them. We drove all day from Mashad to the Afghan border. We enjoyed the relative comfort of riding in private vehicles with agreeable companions. We arrived too late in the day to cross the border, so we slept under the stars. I’m glad we were able to get some sleep before tackling the border crossing into Afghanistan. But, that’s a story for another post.

At last the day had come to push on. This next week was definitely the least pleasant on my overland journey to the East. In Turkey today, there are a number of bridges over the Bosporus Strait. There are modern motorways linking Istanbul with Ankara, the capital. None of that existed in 1970. It was a long and tiring trip across Turkey.

I boarded my overnight bus to Ankara in Istanbul, the only Westerner on the bus as far as I could tell. My conveyance was a fairly modern Mercedes motor coach with reclining seats, except for the back row of seats where I was sent. We had scarcely left the bus station before the bus came to a halt in the line waiting for a ferry across the Bosporus Strait to the Asian side of Turkey.

Fortunately, I remember almost nothing of the long overnight ride to Ankara. My next vivid memory is of the bus depot in Ankara. I had time to wait for my next bus heading to Erzurum, near the Eastern border of Turkey. As I squatted on the floor of the station with my huge, red backpack next to me, I was soon surrounded by a circle of Turkish men on their haunches eyeing me. I didn’t sense any hostility, just a curiosity about this bit of flotsam that had washed up in the bus station.

I boarded the bus headed for Erzurum. It seemed that the further we headed east the more rugged and forbidding the landscape became. In Ankara, we had already climbed 3,000 above the sea level of Istanbul. We continued to climb, often threading along river beds between cliffs on either side. In the distance, even higher peaks grew. I was exhausted by the time we reached Erzurum, the largest easternmost city in Turkey and over a mile in elevation.

I had to change buses and arrange transport to the Iranian border, which was another 100 miles to the east. Up until this point, I was the lone Westerner traveling east. Much to my relief, I met up with another hippie headed east – Peter from England; he and I traveled east together. The scenery on the road was spectacular, if somewhat terrifying on the narrow, winding mountain road. The road continued to rise to about 6,000 feet elevation. At one point, we were only about ten miles from Mount Ararat, 16,854 feet above sea level.

I pulled into Istanbul by the Orient Express on Sunday, September 27, completely exhausted by the trip. I was glad that I had the promise of free, upscale accommodations and didn’t have to immediately search out a hotel. As my new American friend had predicted, the couple who taught at the American University welcomed me warmly. They seemed pleased to have a resident hippy for a couple days; we all went to a party, and they introduced me to all their international set of friends.

They invited me to stay longer, but I was feeling fully recovered from my ordeal on the Orient Express and ready to move out on my own. I moved to a clean hotel, the Sultanahmet, near the Blue Mosque. For the next few days, I did some of the usual tourist activities. My hotel was close to some of the major attractions. The Topkapi Palace was dazzling in its beauty and filled with priceless treasures. I wandered through the huge covered bazaars. I spent time in the great Blue Mosque.

By far the highlight of my visit to Istanbul was Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, built between AD 532 and 537 as the greatest cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church. As a Christian place of worship, it was decorated with stunning frescoes and mosaics. When the city fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the structure became a mosque and all the Christian imagery was either destroyed or covered over with plaster. During the era of the Turkish Republic, the mosque became a museum and the remaining Christian art was exposed to view until July 24, 2020 when it reverted to being a mosque and the artwork was hidden from view.

During this period I also began to research buses from Istanbul, Turkey to Tehran, Iran. Honestly, I was not looking forward to this leg of the journey, a four-day trip of 1,500 miles as the lone Westerner on a bus traveling across the entire width of Turkey and nearly half the width of Iran. Up until now, I was fairly confident of finding someone who spoke either English or German. I knew that would not be the case going forward.

“The Orient Express really is murder.” — travel writer Paul Theroux

I spent a week in Munich taking in most of the tourist attractions. I tried to sample as many German dishes as I could. I toyed with the idea of attempting the arduous journey by land from Munich to Istanbul but abandoned that plan in favor of taking the Orient Express. a three-day journey costing $40 (about $250 in 2020 dollars) traveling in a six person compartment, which could be converted for sleeping at night.

What images come to mind when you hear the words The Orient Express? For many of you, it is likely images from one of the film versions of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. These are scenes of the height of opulence in travel – luxurious private compartments, plush lounge cars, and world class dining with linen, crystal, fine china, and silver place settings. The Orient Express in 1970 had fallen a long way from this pinnacle of opulence.

This is the grim reality as described in a travel guide of the time. “From the 1960s onwards the Orient Express gradually lost its shine. In 1977, nearly 100 years after the first journey, the last direct train left Paris for Istanbul. This spartan Direct-Orient mainly carried hippies and migrants. There was no dining car anymore; passengers had to bring their own supplies for several days.” “The Orient Express really is murder,” complained travel writer Paul Theroux of the frugal surroundings. “The contrast to the sophisticated 1930s Simplon Orient Express could not have been greater.”

This was an apt description of my experience. I was the only Westerner in a compartment with five migrant workers from Yugoslavia. My travel companions and I all spoke a little German, so we were able to navigate simple conversation. For food, they carried a variety of pungent-smelling items, whose aromas filled the compartment for our entire trip. The assertive food smells helped to mask other odors on the train, especially those emanating from the bathrooms. The men’s bathroom in our carriage had about an inch of standing urine on the floor.

I enjoyed the scenery as we passed through Western Europe and on to Eastern Europe. The sleeping accommodations were just boards that flopped down from the walls. I was most grateful for my air mattress and sleeping bag. The most unsettling aspect of the trip was passing through nations still under the yoke of oppressive Communist regimes. The Yugoslavia border crossing was not bad since it was daylight. It was unnerving, however, when we woke in the middle of the night with the train stopped and Bulgarian police going compartment by compartment for passport checks. The Bulgarian regime at the time was brutal and slavishly loyal to the Soviet Union.

I met a friendly African American on the train who had formerly served with the Peace Corps in Turkey. He was going to be staying with friends who taught at the American University in Istanbul. He invited me to join him, certain that they would be happy to have me. More about that in my next post.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

The day had finally arrived! On September 15, I boarded an Icelandic Airlines DC-8 for the flight to Luxembourg by way of Reykjavik, Iceland. Up to this point in my life, my only experience of international travel was to Canada. And yet, as a brash 25-year-old, I recall that my predominant feeling was exhilaration with hardly any tinge of trepidation. I was taking off on the greatest adventure yet of my young life.

I took a bus from Luxembourg to Frankfurt, Germany. I took in the sights in Frankfurt and then hitchhiked to Munich on the following day. I got as far as Nuremberg the first day. I met up with a couple from Australia who were headed to Munich. We ended up in a nice campground on the Dachauerstrasse, the street that leads to the Dachau concentration camp. My high school German came back to me fairly quickly.

I’ve got a funny story to tell concerning this Australian couple. We arrived in Munich when Oktoberfest was in full swing, I rode to the venue with my new Australian friends. The Oktoberfest venue is huge; each of the major breweries has a massive pavilion, each with its own oompa band. We sat at a table with some Bavarian men who were very rude to us. John, the husband of the Australian couple felt compelled to match the Bavarians beer-for-beer. After many liters of beer, he excused himself to go to the bathroom.

His wife and I waited 5, 10, 15 minutes for him to return to the pavilion. When he didn’t return, I went combing through large event grounds. I could find no trace of John. I was concerned, knowing that he spoke no German. When more time went by and John still didn’t return, his wife decided to take their car and return to the camp ground. A taxi pulled in about 3am, and John stumbled into his tent. My curiosity was killing me.

I heard his story when he woke somewhat sober the following morning. He had passed out cold somewhere on the Oktoberfest grounds. Coming to, he found a taxi and tried to tell the taxi driver the address of the campground. All he could get out was “Dachau.” So, in the wee hours of the morning, the driver took him to the entrance of the Dachau concentration camp memorial! Following his shock, he finally was able to get across to the driver that he wanted to go to a camping place.

I spent a couple more days in Munich. A few days later I was planning to board the Orient Express for Istanbul.

In the second week of September 1970, I boarded a Greyhound bus for New York City. I had a few last minute tasks before boarding my Icelandic Airlines flight. I knew that I would be crossing a number of international borders traveling from Luxembourg to India. If I hoped for a relatively smooth journey, I would need as many visas as I could obtain before leaving the US. So I dutifully made the rounds of the various consulates in NYC.

For my efforts, I ended up with tourist visas for Yugoslavia (for some reason I didn’t need a visa for travel through Bulgaria), Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Nepal. I don’t think that Turkey required a visa for US citizens in 1970. I was surprised by how easy the process was at most embassies, although I remember the staff of the Afghan consulate seeming a bit scattered. I always wondered if they had received something other than documents in their diplomatic pouches from Afghanistan. Afghanistan was notable at that time for its high quality hashish.

All that was left for me to do was to hop on the “Hippie Express” and begin my Indian Odyssey.

Throughout the summer months I planned (without the aid of the Internet) how I might make it from NY to India. I had already concluded that I could not afford to fly any farther than Europe on the cheapest airline available, which, at the time, was Icelandic Airlines (referred to by many as the “Hippie Express”). That meant that I needed to plan how to travel overland from Luxembourg to India. Beyond that, my plans were fairly nebulous. I would have to make decisions on the fly.

Many of the hippies who were making the same journey made a virtue of shedding as many vestiges of affluent Western culture as possible when setting out for their Indian odyssey. Not this guy. I was going to take enough of Western culture with me to be comfortable while searching for enlightenment. I bought a huge red backpack from REI. I had a sleeping bag, air mattress, 3-legged folding leather stool, portable stove, cook kit, carved walking stick, and other items to pave my way to Nirvana.

Here’s a picture of me with my entire kit on the early morning in early September 1970 when I headed off for New York and the start of my journey. That’s my mom with her game face on.

In the summer of 1970, I was deeply immersed in the hippie subculture of Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell University. In that subculture there was a great interest in Eastern religions. The Beatles popularized interest in Eastern religions when they went to India to learn Transcendental Meditation. While working in the graduate library at Cornell, I became a voracious reader of books about Buddhism and Hinduism.

A plan began to solidify in my mind. I had a commitment to work in the library until the fall of 1970. I would save money like crazy through the summer months and then head for India in September. Getting my first passport was a first step in the process. I also decided to live in the woods through the summer of 1970 so that I could save a maximum amount of money for my Indian odyssey.