Rick Steves on the "Hippie Trail" Trip That Changed Him

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by Condé Nast Traveler editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission.

Rick Steves

“I wasn't sophisticated—I was just a knucklehead out there on the road, taking notes and enjoying the fact that people had rearranged my cultural furniture and I was tripping around on things, and I liked that. I liked that a lot.”

Rick Steves has a nostalgic twinkle in his eye as he tells me about a 1978 adventure through Asia, during which he backpacked through six countries with his friend Gene and scribbled about every eye-opening moment along the way. We're sitting across from each other in a New York City conference room more than 40 years after the journey, and he's holding his latest book, a hardcover titled On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer (out February 4 from Avalon Travel). The tome, essentially a glowed-up version of his tattered travel diary from that trip, also includes photographs of a 23-year-old Steves riding atop VW buses, standing still on busy streets, and chatting with strangers in Istanbul and Tehran. It captures a young American man experiencing world expansion and culture shock—while loving every minute of it.

As a travel writer, it's easy to relate to the idea of being a “knucklehead” with a notebook, but the suggestion that Rick Steves, perhaps the best known of us knuckleheads, was ever anything but a beloved travel personality—who inspires others through his stories, universe of guide books, and TV program—takes a moment to wrap your head around. Believe it, though: When Steves embarked on this trip in the '70s, he was a piano teacher in Washington taking a short respite from daily life. By the time he returned home, he knew that travel needed to play a more central role in his future.

“I like the last sentence of the book,” Steves says to me on this frigid February morning, flipping through pages of his own chicken-scratch handwriting. His finger jabs on the second-to-last page, at the postscript. “I think, in the wake of this adventure, having stoked my travel spirit, I made a decision that changed the trajectory of my life. I let my piano students go. I turned my recital hall into a lecture hall and began a small travel business.”

Though the book tells the vivid tales of his trip in his own words, I wanted to hear more about the reflection brought on by compiling these notes, and sharing them with a wider audience. What stood out from that life-changing adventure—and what does he think other travelers can learn from it? Below, Steves shares the moments big and small (and smoky) that effectively turned him into a travel writer—plus, the quests on his horizon.

Keeping a travel journal like this feels of a different era.

I kept a journal for every trip. I was very strange at that age to be doing that. I had about six of these hard-bound books with 200 pages of blank paper. When I was nearing the end of the trip, I had to start writing smaller to make it all fit. And then at the very end I would do a review of my expenses and how long the bus ride was, how much it cost, that kind of thing. A 4-hour bus ride from Lahore, Pakistan, to Amritsar, India, including two hours at the border ($1). A no name flop house in Rawalpindi” ($1). That kind of stuff.

You say this is the trip that made you a travel writer. What flipped the switch?

I was just absorbing. I didn't really know what I was going to take home, but I did know I was going to let loose and embrace life. I mean, I had this very funny idea about marijuana [before the trip]. Some people are very careful of how they're gonna lose their virginity. I wanted to lose my marijuana virginity in a beautiful way, and doing that in Afghanistan was perfect.

We're going to need to hear more…

That was in Herat, Afghanistan. It's a gorgeous town. It's the kind of town where there were no sights to see, but you just walk in a different direction every day. And I remember its rhythm. Every five yards there was a new little shop and craftsmen and somebody that wanted to share something with me and entertain. At that time, in Afghanistan, in India, in Nepal, marijuana was just part of the culture. Not a big deal. Much like people clink glasses of wine in our culture, I think.

My friend Gene was a little more into it, but I was more green and naïve. When you smoke pot the first time, [there may be a moment where you think] nothing happens, but then you look at the light bulb and it starts to breathe and you realize you're high.

That sounds like some good weed.

[Laughs.] Well and next, I'm on the roof of the hotel, and it's twilight, and all of a sudden I see the horse-drawn carts, like chariots, racing down the street below. And I'm just sitting there with the cleaning man who happened to be on the rooftop with me, and we're just marveling at how the stars were coming out. The lights on the carts turned on, and in my notes, they were torches. Now when I read the journal of the rest of this trip, I have to sometimes go, This is too fantastic. Was it really this good, or was I just high?

In those moments, though, there's just a gracefulness in the world. There's a fragrance in the world, there's a sparkle in the world, just like there is in music. In that way, you can heighten your experience [with marijuana]. What's not to like about that—it lets you see things differently.

It sounds like this trip inspired a number of reflections.

This trip planted the seeds for what I would do for the rest of my life. In 2010 and 2011 I was the leading sponsor, funder, and spokesperson for the law that legalized the adult recreational use of marijuana in Washington, which, along with Colorado, was the first state to do that. Today, more than 50% of our country has the right to enjoy marijuana as a civil liberty. And it very well could have been that seed planted here, because Washington state had to fall on the barbed wire so everybody else could walk over us and reach this point where we stop arresting poor people and people of color for having a joint in their pocket.

But it's not fundamentally about marijuana, you know. It's about freedom. It's about getting out of your comfort zone. It's about accidentally realizing you learn more about who you are by leaving home and looking at your norm from a distance. It's about a situation that roughs up your ethnocentricity. It humbles you. You thought you knew what music is, but you didn't know what music is. You thought you knew what love is. You thought you knew what pain or joy was. And then you travel to the other side of the world, and you realize no, a billion people in India see it differently.

What other seeds were planted on this trip, that you've continued to harvest over the years?

I didn't know what I was learning there, I was just soaking it up. I did realize that the most frightened people are those who have yet to travel. They haven't had their hippie trail.

Why do we want to build walls in this country? When to me, obviously, if you want to be safe, you don't build walls, because that's not a prescription for safety but a way to withdraw from the world. If you've done a philosophical hippie trail, you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined to build walls.

People today say, Oh, man, I wish you could do the hippie trail today. I sure missed out. You were lucky to be there in 1978. No, you can do a hippie trail today. You can't go from the exact same pudding shop in Istanbul to that chai spot in Kathmandu with a bunch of hippies on a bus like that, but you can have your hippie trail experience. The trick is getting away from home and reassessing a lot of truths that you were raised thinking are self evident and God-given, and then defining success for yourself when you get home.

In addition to bigger shifts in your worldview, I find that the most impactful moments from trips are often the least expected. Were there any seemingly tiny memories that have loomed large in the long run?

I met a professor in Afghanistan who joined me at lunch, and he said, I want you to know that a third of the people on the planet eat with a spoon and fork like you, a third eat with chopsticks, and a third eat with their fingers, like I do, and we're all civilized just the same. At first I thought, Boy he's got a chip on his shoulder. But he was right. I thought less of him because he ate with his fingers, and he knew that, and he was saddened by that, and he wanted me to know that we're all civilized just the same. And then I realized there are different norms. Americans are expert at thinking we're we're the norm. Americans are expert at thinking the world's a pyramid with us on top, and everybody else is trying to get there. Americans are expert at thinking we are exceptional. The only thing exceptional about us is that we could actually think that we are.

Somebody who's never been out of this country, who doesn't have a passport, whose worldview is shaped by fear mongering, commercial TV news, they could very reasonably think that we are the norm. But other people have their own dreams. They don't have the American dream. And it's not unpatriotic to acknowledge that.

You talk a lot, especially in reference to your guide books, about wanting to make the world feel accessible to American travelers. Are there any trips that still feel ambitious, or even daunting, to you?

My work as a travel writer, a tour guide, a TV host, and a teacher is to help inspire people to have culture shock. You'd think that I'm well traveled because I now spend 100 days a year on the road. But I always go to Europe. I'm updating my books: I've got a huge responsibility with 60 books to update. I'd love to go to the South Pacific. I haven't been there, except for a trip to Papua, New Guinea. But even if you gave me an all expenses paid trip to a luxurious resort in Fiji I would say, God, that'd be great, but I've got to go back to Europe and update my Sicily guide. Because that is my mission right now. I don't spend my time dreaming of what's on my bucket list. I spend a lot of time thinking, How can I help people enjoy the places I love in Europe? I'm going back with my TV crew in a couple of months to film in Rome and Istanbul. Then I'll be researching in Barcelona, Prague, and London, and then I'll be hiking around the Dolomites on an extended, long-distance trail with my girlfriend.

Are there any stones in Europe that remain unturned?

Well, I'd love to go farther east. I'd love to go to Romania. I'd love to go to Ukraine when it's good to go. I'd love to go to Georgia. But no, what I want to do is help grapple with this problem of over tourism in great places. The solution is not to skip those places, but it's to go to those places in a way where you can enjoy them without the crowds. I always like to say there are two IQs of European travelers, those who wait in lines and those who don't wait. And if you're waiting in line, you put yourself there. The only regret I have ever had in my work is that took me 20 years to realize the luxury of hiring a private local guide. Now, when I go to Europe, I've got a guide every hour of the day. They're my friends, and my sidekicks, and my walking encyclopedias.

I guess that's the good news. There's always something that the next trip can teach you.

On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer

$30.00, Bookshop

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

The Latest Stories from Condé Nast Traveler

• Want to be the first to know? Sign up to our newsletters for travel inspiration and tips

• Thanksgiving in Paris Is One of the Most American Things You Can Do

• 15 Unwritten Rules to Know Before Visiting New York City

• Welcome to Park Ranger Instagram—the Most Wholesome Corner of the Internet