11 ms·

The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s

226 points by I-M-S 8y ago

wuschel 8y ago
Wonderful article. But it was not only the 1970s: there were still many a hidden spot in Asia in the early 2000s, as travel was restricted in countries with civil war, or dictatorial regimes, and there still are. As those geographies get connected to the global trade- and political system, these habitats of men and animal change, for better, or worse.
- eigenvector 8y ago
  The places that remain "left behind" by globalization even to this day share a few things: - not on any reasonable trans-Asia transport route, so no incentive for outsiders to invest in roads/rail/other transport infrastructure - politically at least somewhat isolated, so no visa-free travel for most foreigners - sparsely populated, preventing easy widespread wireless Internet access - no major exploitable natural resource that would attract a rush of foreign investment This basically gives us: the Central Asian SSRs (except Kazakhstan which has rich gas resources), Afghanistan, Iran, frontier regions of Pakistan, Myanmar (rapidly changing now), Bhutan and a few others.
  - contingencies 8y ago
    I always say to people visiting Yunnan: find a dead end road or a dirt road that goes through an area of green on the satellite. Go there. It's usually spectacular.
    - slammm 8y ago
      what do you mean by "on the satellite"?
      - GuiA 8y ago
        Probably Google Map’s satellite imagery.
technotony 8y ago
I've often wondered if there's a similarity in personality between people exploring technology today and explorers of old. This article seems to suggest a link, and that makes sense to me: as the world has flattened and become global there's less interest in exploring geographically and the frontiers of human life are increasingly technological. Kevin Kelly seems to have modeled that transition perfectly.
- erikb 8y ago
  There are such people and they have Youtube channels. However I wouldn't underestimate the desire of geographical exploration just yet. Even if you can easily travel everywhere this ball we live on is still bigger than any single person can explore in a lifetime. Give me a single city (I'm a city person) in another country where I can stomach the food and exercise the language and I can easily spend a year before I get bored. And I bet there are more than 80 such cities on this planet.
jpatokal 8y ago
The autobiography of Lonely Planet founders Tony & Maureen Wheeler gives a fascinating glimpse of this era, and turns into a startup story along the way. Highly recommended for Hacker News readers who also like travel! Unlikely Destinations aka Once While Travelling aka The Lonely Planet Story (no, I don't know why it has three different names/editions...) https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Destinations-Lonely-Planet-Story/dp/0794605230 https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Destinations-Lonely-Planet-S... (not a referral link) Disclaimer: I used to work for LP back in the day, and had the pleasure of meeting Tony & Maureen on several occasions.
- kqr2 8y ago
  Also check out this interview from the founders on "How I Built This" podcast: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626649702/lonely-planet-maureen-tony-wheeler https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626649702/lonely-planet-maure...
stef25 8y ago
At the end of the 90s backpacking in Asia wasn't all that different. I did this for several months at a time without a cell phone, internet cafés were very slow and unreliable and there was no good way to book budget accommodation anyway. Lonely planet was the only decent source of info but it didn't cover it all. I spent some time on islands in the Mekong in Laos where there was only a few hrs of electricity per day and no connection to the outside world. To leave I took a motorised canoe to the mainland and then found out the next flight out of Pakse was in a few days, so I spent several days there doing basically nothing. Now that kind of time wasting just seems almost unfathomable. Every where I arrived I had no bookings, just a few addresses from Lonely Planet that you'd have to reach to inquire if they had free rooms. I've rarely been as happy as I was travelling around there with just a bag of clothes on my back. Good times.
- ghaff 8y ago
  It wasn't until you really got into the late 2000s that things started to change. And, even then, really ubiquitous mapping/GPS, more and more being online, machine translation, etc. have changed traveling to places like China on almost a year-by-year basis over the past decade. It probably boggles a lot of people's minds that even 20 years or so ago, taking off on certain types of trips to many parts of the world meant, at best, infrequent contact and, often, essentially disappearing. Today I expect there's increasingly an expectation that you'd get a satellite messaging system under those circumstances. The difference in information availability generally is astounding. I imagine that would drive most of us crazy generally if you go back a few decades.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    One of the highlights of coming back from my trips back in the 80s was reading through the month of Swedish newspapers that had piled up in my apartment and get "fast forwarded" on all the news that had happened while I was away. I was careful to sort them by date and not peek on the newer one so I didn't get "spoiled" :) Today, even when I travel to quite remote corners of the world, I spend much of the day on the same web sites as usual, reading the same things, talking to the same people. In a sense, I'm never really leaving my regular life, for better and for worse.
sowbug 8y ago
Are those scans of old film photographs? If yes, then I'm surprised how rich the colors are compared to digital photography today. Is it that film has a different character from digital? Did photographers have a different aesthetic sense when they developed film back then? (I assume that there's some artistry involved not just in taking a photo but also in developing it.) Is film still marvelously better than digital photography? Or am I falling victim to some sort of psychological trick where warmer colors just look better? The reason I ask is that I recently scanned some old family photographs from the 1990s, and I had the same impression of them: rich colors that you just don't see today. And these were anything but good photography. They were from a 35mm point-and-shoot and taken in casual settings.
- sverige 8y ago
  Yes, those must be old photographs. And yes, there was some artistry involved in developing both the film and making prints. The demise of film and color processing is a tragedy. Sure, it was expensive, much more so than simply snapping digital photos to your heart's content (as long as you have enough storage, of course), but it made you think about what you were doing before you pressed the button. And processing film and developing prints was endlessly fascinating, even if it was frustrating at times. I have yet to see any digital photograph as rich as lovely old Kodachrome could come out, even when sent to the local drugstore to be developed. It has actually nearly killed my desire to make photographs. These pictures made me really happy.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Honestly, I sort of have the opposite perspective. I never had a darkroom after graduating school and slides became something I mostly just shot on trips. I find digital and the sharing of digital photos rekindled my interest to a large degree.
  - varjag 8y ago
    K14 development process was automatic and really streamlined. Sometimes you could order to push/pull the roll a stop but that's about it. BW film, and prints (BW or color) certainly an entire other matter…
walrus01 8y ago
With some exceptions I think the readership of HN is generally under age 45... If any of you happen to know people who were part of the counterculture in the late 1960s and early 70s, and know folks aged 60 to 75, ask them about stories of traveling overland from Istanbul to India. There was a well trod route of backpackers traveling through Afghanistan in the pre-soviet-invasion era, when it was safe, cheap and welcoming. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-caryl/strange-rebels-excerpt_b_3427854.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-caryl/strange-rebel...
- txcwpalpha 8y ago
  More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail As the Middle East and Southwest Asia became less hospitable to tourists, the Hippie Trail kinda fell out of favor. The "new" trails are the Banana Pancake Trail (same idea as the Hippie Trail, but in booming Southeast Asia) and the Gringo Trail in South America. Although these "trails" are much different because of a lot of reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread, such as less hitchhiking, more "flashpacking", and generally increased connectivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pancake_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pancake_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail
  - walrus01 8y ago
    One thing the map doesn't quite get right, with my knowledge of Afghanistan geography, is that traveling through the country was not a straight shot from herat to Kabul... Mountains and almost impassable roads in between, in the exact centre of the country, meant at the time, and now, there's generally two viable routes. Going straight through the center of the country, through Ghor and Bamiyan provinces requires a high clearance 4x4. For more normal vehicles, one route from herat to the northern provinces and the Mazar-e-sharif region, then salang pass to Kabul. Or go southeast from herat to Kandahar, and then Kandahar to Kabul. Also there was a fair portion of the hippie trail that went to Kabul, then to Kandahar, and to Quetta, bypassing peshwar and the nwfp. Though the cannabis lovers certainly all wanted to visit oeshawart.
  - 8y ago
forkLding 8y ago
If you're looking for relatively unchanged Asian culture and great views, I would recommend Nepal. I was visiting friends in Kathmandu (likely a decade ago) and had a great time exploring the mountains and the cultural areas. Also if you make lifelong friends, they might give you a khata scarf. You can also buy those gurkha knives if you can take it back home. There was also some bad people but that is common everywhere in the world exacerbated with elements of poverty so don't forget your common sense when dealing with sketchy situations. Theres also definitely pollution building up in the rivers. Also note that the time I visited was some time after the Nepalese Civil War so soldiers still wandered the streets. However they honestly don't care about what you do, I don't know if they're still around now. As well, electricity and water would be out after 10pm so be prepared for that.
- beilabs 8y ago
  Blackouts are no longer an issue. I imagine the water turned off because the pumps couldn't operate (no electricity). I should do a blog post about the reason why electricity was generated but not directed to the right place (corruption). There are still parts of Kathmandu that feel like you've stepped back in time but are growing increasingly hard to find. The city at times feels overpopulated due to the huge amounts of migrants that came for services and work. While Kathmandu is incredibly polluted (due to road works, construction, river pollution), they've come a long way in the last few years.
  - kweks 8y ago
    In my visits of a few years back, Kathmandu was a horribly sad mess of huge injections of foreign money that creates imbalance, open prostitution, drug use, aggression and general steamrolling of original culture. It was quite sad to see, and I was very happy to move on. With that said, western Nepal, given its lack of road borders, is quite sublime and relatively untouched.
- mdeg 8y ago
  I was there a few weeks ago. The soldiers are still there, in patrols and along roads, but they don't bother tourists. Electricity is pretty solid, cuts are common but long outages are rare. Most accommodation has UPS systems fitted anyway. The petrol shortages are a thing of the past and there are paved roads in some areas now (main roadways and Thamel). Kathmandu is a nice city. The traffic and the dust are awful but the city is filled with charm.
ctrager 8y ago
In 1978 I went overland from Greece through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to India. I later learned the route was called the "Hippie Trail", but I never heard that term at the time. The route shut down just a few weeks after I passed through: Iran closed because of the Iranian revolution. Afghanistan closed because the Soviets were moving in. The feel of travel was different then because no internet, no cell phones. I communicated with friends and family using letters, single-page blue "aerograms". When I see them now, I'm amazed how tiny my handwriting was. To receive a letter I would have people send mail to the American Express office upstream. My trip ended when I noticed my urine was the color of Coca Cola - a sign of hepatitis. I got a flight out of Delhi the next day to London, for the free health care.
- pm90 8y ago
  Really hope the world will return to that kind of freedom in travel sometime soon in the future.
  - lisper 8y ago
    Don't hold your breath. :-(
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Erm, how is there less freedom of travel today compared to 1980? There was a big cold war with a real iron curtain dividing the world back then.
      - tim333 8y ago
        Yeah I'd say it's easier to travel these days in many ways. Airfares are lower as a percent of income and the internet is everywhere. On the other hand it doesn't feel quite as exotic and the price differential between the west and cheap countries isn't as big on the whole. Some countries are kind of closed like Afganistan and Iran but on the other hand ones like China and Myanmar are more open than they were.
      - 8y ago
asveikau 8y ago
Sorry to be that guy but... > Growing up in the 1960s in New Jersey was very parochial. > I had never even been out of New England. New Jersey is not New England. I am used to non-northeasterners making this kind of mistake, but wouldn't expect to hear it in Jersey.
- j1vms 8y ago
  > New Jersey is not New England. In case anyone else is wondering, New England is (geographically) Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Every state north/east of New York state.
alister 8y ago
> I left home with 500 rolls of film in my backpack. It was close to $5 a photo in today's money just to develop and print the photos. So I had to really think about it each time I pressed that shutter. At 24 frames per roll, the cost to develop and print his entire backpack would be 24 x $5 x 500 = $60,000. That is indeed a big investment he made to document his travels.
- skookum 8y ago
  Forget the cost... 500 rolls is over 30lbs! I can't imagine carting that much film around while backpacking. I don't think I ever brought more than about 4-5 dozen rolls even on month-plus length trips - that plus a lead-lined bag for airport x-ray was already a hassle and a significant portion of my carry-on. I very much relate to the "really think about it each time I pressed that shutter". I spent so much time shooting film that now, even after over 15 years of digital, I still struggle to kick this habit and need to constantly remind myself to take more shots: explore more variations on a subject, grab a shot even if I don't think it's going to be outstanding, etc.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Never at that scale or for that length of time, ordering a few dozen 36 exposure rolls of slide film of various speeds from B&H was always one of the rituals before I went on a big trip. As was the painstaking labeling, sorting, and editing when I got back.
- irq11 8y ago
  Or he made contact prints and figured out which frames to print by using a loupe. ...ah, film.
alister 8y ago
> except when I got to Iran and I got a "real job" with a driver and everything. But then that kind of blew up in my face when the revolution in 1979 came... He left us hanging there! What kind of job can a 26 or 27-year-old American hippie traveler get in Iran, presumably not even speaking Persian, that comes with a driver and everything? There must be an interesting story there.
- sho 8y ago
  Well, I don't know about Iran, but I can tell you that a lot of jobs in developing countries will come with a driver - or two. It's just considered a necessary part of the "package". Bear in mind that in the places I've seen it, mainly in Indonesia, the cost of the driver is not high - maybe $200-300/month. The expat usually doesn't have a local driver's license, so it's sort of a no-brainer, not the luxury you might be assuming...
koliber 8y ago
My best advice is: ignore the people who say "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." Go and travel, and experience it yourself. In 20 years, you'll be saying "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." I hope someone else chimes in and says "ignore the people who say that it used to be nice, and go traveling anyway."
- kkarakk 8y ago
  my first thought is always "but what about the people who aren't travelling and don't get to use the modern conveniences you seem to just be on break from?" whenever i hear this sentiment. you want to truly explore the wild, there are plenty of opportunities. wanting to goto a place that is prettier and has less opportunities for connection seems elitist against the people who actually live in your getaway paradise and make a hard life there using tourism bucks.
random878 8y ago
I went backpacking around S.E.A. for a short time in 2002. It was just before the digital boom. No phone, just dropping into an internet cafe once a week. SLR with about 50-60 rolls of film. Info came from a tatty copy of a guidebook, word of mouth, and reading the lonely planet forum. Absolutely zero digital distraction. Lots of long bus/train/boat journeys with a book for company. It was heaven. I went back in 2008 and did the trip again. The digital boom had arrived. I could already sense that what I'd previously experienced was lost for good.
Sileni 8y ago
I'm nervous about the effect that losing this will have on people. How many people have you heard stories about where they "dropped out" for a couple of months/years and came back with a completely different view on life? What are the people who otherwise would have dropped out to recollect going to do in a world where you literally cannot escape "real life"?
JDiculous 8y ago
As someone who's been traveling for the last 10 months and currently am in Thailand, this was a very enjoyable read. Although cheap flights and smartphones with data and GPS have made the life of a traveler incredibly easier, the downside is the places you visit are more touristy and people I'd imagine are way less social (at least to the people directly around them). Often I'll arrive to a hostel just to see everyone in the common area silently glued to their smartphones. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to a time before this technology, but there are certainly serious downsides to this hyperconnectivity. It's the same effect that technology is having on everyday life. The increased connectivity of the internet paradoxically withdraws us from our immediate surroundings.

226 points by I-M-S 8y ago

Wonderful article. But it was not only the 1970s: there were still many a hidden spot in Asia in the early 2000s, as travel was restricted in countries with civil war, or dictatorial regimes, and there still are. As those geographies get connected to the global trade- and political system, these habitats of men and animal change, for better, or worse.

eigenvector 8y ago
The places that remain "left behind" by globalization even to this day share a few things: - not on any reasonable trans-Asia transport route, so no incentive for outsiders to invest in roads/rail/other transport infrastructure - politically at least somewhat isolated, so no visa-free travel for most foreigners - sparsely populated, preventing easy widespread wireless Internet access - no major exploitable natural resource that would attract a rush of foreign investment This basically gives us: the Central Asian SSRs (except Kazakhstan which has rich gas resources), Afghanistan, Iran, frontier regions of Pakistan, Myanmar (rapidly changing now), Bhutan and a few others.
- contingencies 8y ago
  I always say to people visiting Yunnan: find a dead end road or a dirt road that goes through an area of green on the satellite. Go there. It's usually spectacular.
  - slammm 8y ago
    what do you mean by "on the satellite"?
    - GuiA 8y ago
      Probably Google Map’s satellite imagery.

technotony 8y ago

I've often wondered if there's a similarity in personality between people exploring technology today and explorers of old. This article seems to suggest a link, and that makes sense to me: as the world has flattened and become global there's less interest in exploring geographically and the frontiers of human life are increasingly technological. Kevin Kelly seems to have modeled that transition perfectly.

erikb 8y ago
There are such people and they have Youtube channels. However I wouldn't underestimate the desire of geographical exploration just yet. Even if you can easily travel everywhere this ball we live on is still bigger than any single person can explore in a lifetime. Give me a single city (I'm a city person) in another country where I can stomach the food and exercise the language and I can easily spend a year before I get bored. And I bet there are more than 80 such cities on this planet.

jpatokal 8y ago

The autobiography of Lonely Planet founders Tony & Maureen Wheeler gives a fascinating glimpse of this era, and turns into a startup story along the way. Highly recommended for Hacker News readers who also like travel! Unlikely Destinations aka Once While Travelling aka The Lonely Planet Story (no, I don't know why it has three different names/editions...) https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Destinations-Lonely-Planet-Story/dp/0794605230 https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Destinations-Lonely-Planet-S... (not a referral link) Disclaimer: I used to work for LP back in the day, and had the pleasure of meeting Tony & Maureen on several occasions.

kqr2 8y ago
Also check out this interview from the founders on "How I Built This" podcast: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626649702/lonely-planet-maureen-tony-wheeler https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626649702/lonely-planet-maure...

stef25 8y ago

At the end of the 90s backpacking in Asia wasn't all that different. I did this for several months at a time without a cell phone, internet cafés were very slow and unreliable and there was no good way to book budget accommodation anyway. Lonely planet was the only decent source of info but it didn't cover it all. I spent some time on islands in the Mekong in Laos where there was only a few hrs of electricity per day and no connection to the outside world. To leave I took a motorised canoe to the mainland and then found out the next flight out of Pakse was in a few days, so I spent several days there doing basically nothing. Now that kind of time wasting just seems almost unfathomable. Every where I arrived I had no bookings, just a few addresses from Lonely Planet that you'd have to reach to inquire if they had free rooms. I've rarely been as happy as I was travelling around there with just a bag of clothes on my back. Good times.

ghaff 8y ago
It wasn't until you really got into the late 2000s that things started to change. And, even then, really ubiquitous mapping/GPS, more and more being online, machine translation, etc. have changed traveling to places like China on almost a year-by-year basis over the past decade. It probably boggles a lot of people's minds that even 20 years or so ago, taking off on certain types of trips to many parts of the world meant, at best, infrequent contact and, often, essentially disappearing. Today I expect there's increasingly an expectation that you'd get a satellite messaging system under those circumstances. The difference in information availability generally is astounding. I imagine that would drive most of us crazy generally if you go back a few decades.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  One of the highlights of coming back from my trips back in the 80s was reading through the month of Swedish newspapers that had piled up in my apartment and get "fast forwarded" on all the news that had happened while I was away. I was careful to sort them by date and not peek on the newer one so I didn't get "spoiled" :) Today, even when I travel to quite remote corners of the world, I spend much of the day on the same web sites as usual, reading the same things, talking to the same people. In a sense, I'm never really leaving my regular life, for better and for worse.

sowbug 8y ago

Are those scans of old film photographs? If yes, then I'm surprised how rich the colors are compared to digital photography today. Is it that film has a different character from digital? Did photographers have a different aesthetic sense when they developed film back then? (I assume that there's some artistry involved not just in taking a photo but also in developing it.) Is film still marvelously better than digital photography? Or am I falling victim to some sort of psychological trick where warmer colors just look better? The reason I ask is that I recently scanned some old family photographs from the 1990s, and I had the same impression of them: rich colors that you just don't see today. And these were anything but good photography. They were from a 35mm point-and-shoot and taken in casual settings.

sverige 8y ago
Yes, those must be old photographs. And yes, there was some artistry involved in developing both the film and making prints. The demise of film and color processing is a tragedy. Sure, it was expensive, much more so than simply snapping digital photos to your heart's content (as long as you have enough storage, of course), but it made you think about what you were doing before you pressed the button. And processing film and developing prints was endlessly fascinating, even if it was frustrating at times. I have yet to see any digital photograph as rich as lovely old Kodachrome could come out, even when sent to the local drugstore to be developed. It has actually nearly killed my desire to make photographs. These pictures made me really happy.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Honestly, I sort of have the opposite perspective. I never had a darkroom after graduating school and slides became something I mostly just shot on trips. I find digital and the sharing of digital photos rekindled my interest to a large degree.
- varjag 8y ago
  K14 development process was automatic and really streamlined. Sometimes you could order to push/pull the roll a stop but that's about it. BW film, and prints (BW or color) certainly an entire other matter…

walrus01 8y ago

With some exceptions I think the readership of HN is generally under age 45... If any of you happen to know people who were part of the counterculture in the late 1960s and early 70s, and know folks aged 60 to 75, ask them about stories of traveling overland from Istanbul to India. There was a well trod route of backpackers traveling through Afghanistan in the pre-soviet-invasion era, when it was safe, cheap and welcoming. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-caryl/strange-rebels-excerpt_b_3427854.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-caryl/strange-rebel...

txcwpalpha 8y ago
More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail As the Middle East and Southwest Asia became less hospitable to tourists, the Hippie Trail kinda fell out of favor. The "new" trails are the Banana Pancake Trail (same idea as the Hippie Trail, but in booming Southeast Asia) and the Gringo Trail in South America. Although these "trails" are much different because of a lot of reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread, such as less hitchhiking, more "flashpacking", and generally increased connectivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pancake_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pancake_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail
- walrus01 8y ago
  One thing the map doesn't quite get right, with my knowledge of Afghanistan geography, is that traveling through the country was not a straight shot from herat to Kabul... Mountains and almost impassable roads in between, in the exact centre of the country, meant at the time, and now, there's generally two viable routes. Going straight through the center of the country, through Ghor and Bamiyan provinces requires a high clearance 4x4. For more normal vehicles, one route from herat to the northern provinces and the Mazar-e-sharif region, then salang pass to Kabul. Or go southeast from herat to Kandahar, and then Kandahar to Kabul. Also there was a fair portion of the hippie trail that went to Kabul, then to Kandahar, and to Quetta, bypassing peshwar and the nwfp. Though the cannabis lovers certainly all wanted to visit oeshawart.
- 8y ago

forkLding 8y ago

If you're looking for relatively unchanged Asian culture and great views, I would recommend Nepal. I was visiting friends in Kathmandu (likely a decade ago) and had a great time exploring the mountains and the cultural areas. Also if you make lifelong friends, they might give you a khata scarf. You can also buy those gurkha knives if you can take it back home. There was also some bad people but that is common everywhere in the world exacerbated with elements of poverty so don't forget your common sense when dealing with sketchy situations. Theres also definitely pollution building up in the rivers. Also note that the time I visited was some time after the Nepalese Civil War so soldiers still wandered the streets. However they honestly don't care about what you do, I don't know if they're still around now. As well, electricity and water would be out after 10pm so be prepared for that.

beilabs 8y ago
Blackouts are no longer an issue. I imagine the water turned off because the pumps couldn't operate (no electricity). I should do a blog post about the reason why electricity was generated but not directed to the right place (corruption). There are still parts of Kathmandu that feel like you've stepped back in time but are growing increasingly hard to find. The city at times feels overpopulated due to the huge amounts of migrants that came for services and work. While Kathmandu is incredibly polluted (due to road works, construction, river pollution), they've come a long way in the last few years.
- kweks 8y ago
  In my visits of a few years back, Kathmandu was a horribly sad mess of huge injections of foreign money that creates imbalance, open prostitution, drug use, aggression and general steamrolling of original culture. It was quite sad to see, and I was very happy to move on. With that said, western Nepal, given its lack of road borders, is quite sublime and relatively untouched.
mdeg 8y ago
I was there a few weeks ago. The soldiers are still there, in patrols and along roads, but they don't bother tourists. Electricity is pretty solid, cuts are common but long outages are rare. Most accommodation has UPS systems fitted anyway. The petrol shortages are a thing of the past and there are paved roads in some areas now (main roadways and Thamel). Kathmandu is a nice city. The traffic and the dust are awful but the city is filled with charm.

ctrager 8y ago

In 1978 I went overland from Greece through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to India. I later learned the route was called the "Hippie Trail", but I never heard that term at the time. The route shut down just a few weeks after I passed through: Iran closed because of the Iranian revolution. Afghanistan closed because the Soviets were moving in. The feel of travel was different then because no internet, no cell phones. I communicated with friends and family using letters, single-page blue "aerograms". When I see them now, I'm amazed how tiny my handwriting was. To receive a letter I would have people send mail to the American Express office upstream. My trip ended when I noticed my urine was the color of Coca Cola - a sign of hepatitis. I got a flight out of Delhi the next day to London, for the free health care.

pm90 8y ago
Really hope the world will return to that kind of freedom in travel sometime soon in the future.
- lisper 8y ago
  Don't hold your breath. :-(
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    Erm, how is there less freedom of travel today compared to 1980? There was a big cold war with a real iron curtain dividing the world back then.
    - tim333 8y ago
      Yeah I'd say it's easier to travel these days in many ways. Airfares are lower as a percent of income and the internet is everywhere. On the other hand it doesn't feel quite as exotic and the price differential between the west and cheap countries isn't as big on the whole. Some countries are kind of closed like Afganistan and Iran but on the other hand ones like China and Myanmar are more open than they were.
    - 8y ago

asveikau 8y ago

Sorry to be that guy but... > Growing up in the 1960s in New Jersey was very parochial. > I had never even been out of New England. New Jersey is not New England. I am used to non-northeasterners making this kind of mistake, but wouldn't expect to hear it in Jersey.

j1vms 8y ago
> New Jersey is not New England. In case anyone else is wondering, New England is (geographically) Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Every state north/east of New York state.

alister 8y ago

> I left home with 500 rolls of film in my backpack. It was close to $5 a photo in today's money just to develop and print the photos. So I had to really think about it each time I pressed that shutter. At 24 frames per roll, the cost to develop and print his entire backpack would be 24 x $5 x 500 = $60,000. That is indeed a big investment he made to document his travels.

skookum 8y ago
Forget the cost... 500 rolls is over 30lbs! I can't imagine carting that much film around while backpacking. I don't think I ever brought more than about 4-5 dozen rolls even on month-plus length trips - that plus a lead-lined bag for airport x-ray was already a hassle and a significant portion of my carry-on. I very much relate to the "really think about it each time I pressed that shutter". I spent so much time shooting film that now, even after over 15 years of digital, I still struggle to kick this habit and need to constantly remind myself to take more shots: explore more variations on a subject, grab a shot even if I don't think it's going to be outstanding, etc.
ghaff 8y ago
Never at that scale or for that length of time, ordering a few dozen 36 exposure rolls of slide film of various speeds from B&H was always one of the rituals before I went on a big trip. As was the painstaking labeling, sorting, and editing when I got back.
irq11 8y ago
Or he made contact prints and figured out which frames to print by using a loupe. ...ah, film.

alister 8y ago

> except when I got to Iran and I got a "real job" with a driver and everything. But then that kind of blew up in my face when the revolution in 1979 came... He left us hanging there! What kind of job can a 26 or 27-year-old American hippie traveler get in Iran, presumably not even speaking Persian, that comes with a driver and everything? There must be an interesting story there.

sho 8y ago
Well, I don't know about Iran, but I can tell you that a lot of jobs in developing countries will come with a driver - or two. It's just considered a necessary part of the "package". Bear in mind that in the places I've seen it, mainly in Indonesia, the cost of the driver is not high - maybe $200-300/month. The expat usually doesn't have a local driver's license, so it's sort of a no-brainer, not the luxury you might be assuming...

koliber 8y ago

My best advice is: ignore the people who say "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." Go and travel, and experience it yourself. In 20 years, you'll be saying "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." I hope someone else chimes in and says "ignore the people who say that it used to be nice, and go traveling anyway."

kkarakk 8y ago
my first thought is always "but what about the people who aren't travelling and don't get to use the modern conveniences you seem to just be on break from?" whenever i hear this sentiment. you want to truly explore the wild, there are plenty of opportunities. wanting to goto a place that is prettier and has less opportunities for connection seems elitist against the people who actually live in your getaway paradise and make a hard life there using tourism bucks.

random878 8y ago

I went backpacking around S.E.A. for a short time in 2002. It was just before the digital boom. No phone, just dropping into an internet cafe once a week. SLR with about 50-60 rolls of film. Info came from a tatty copy of a guidebook, word of mouth, and reading the lonely planet forum. Absolutely zero digital distraction. Lots of long bus/train/boat journeys with a book for company. It was heaven. I went back in 2008 and did the trip again. The digital boom had arrived. I could already sense that what I'd previously experienced was lost for good.

Sileni 8y ago

I'm nervous about the effect that losing this will have on people. How many people have you heard stories about where they "dropped out" for a couple of months/years and came back with a completely different view on life? What are the people who otherwise would have dropped out to recollect going to do in a world where you literally cannot escape "real life"?

JDiculous 8y ago

As someone who's been traveling for the last 10 months and currently am in Thailand, this was a very enjoyable read. Although cheap flights and smartphones with data and GPS have made the life of a traveler incredibly easier, the downside is the places you visit are more touristy and people I'd imagine are way less social (at least to the people directly around them). Often I'll arrive to a hostel just to see everyone in the common area silently glued to their smartphones. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to a time before this technology, but there are certainly serious downsides to this hyperconnectivity. It's the same effect that technology is having on everyday life. The increased connectivity of the internet paradoxically withdraws us from our immediate surroundings.