Rick Steves · 2025 · road

Rick Steves's 2025 book, drawn from the journal he kept as a 23-year-old in 1978, retracing the legendary Hippie Trail overland from Istanbul to Kathmandu. Through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, by bus and train and on foot, the future travel guru discovers the wider world and his own calling. He made the trip in the last year it was possible, before revolution and invasion closed the road for good. A vivid, youthful record of a vanished route.

1. 1
   Istanbul

   1978. A 23-year-old Rick Steves and his friend Gene set out from Istanbul, where Europe ends and the great overland trail to the East begins.

2. 2
   Tehran

   Across Anatolia and into Iran, making friends in Tehran in the last months before the revolution closes the road behind him.

3. 3
   Herat

   Into Afghanistan and the mud-walled city of Herat, where he gets high for the first time and the world cracks open.

4. 4
   Kabul

   On to Kabul, dusty and welcoming, a hub of the trail not yet touched by the war to come.

5. 5
   Lahore

   Through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and the bazaars of Lahore, where it is gloriously easy to get lost.

6. 6
   Delhi

   Down into the heat and crush of India and the streets of Delhi.

7. 7
   Varanasi

   To Varanasi on the Ganges, up before dawn among the pilgrims and the burning ghats.

8. 8
   Kathmandu

   And over the border to Nepal and Kathmandu, trail's end, with leeches in Pokhara and the Himalaya filling the sky.