I completely understand the driver when he says "one rainy moring he couldn't face the underground" and he left that life. I did that 6 years ago. I left the sheer insanity that is the US and have never returned. The weight that has been lifted is indescribable. (written from a port on the Med Sea where I live now 🙂)

I was there in 1983-85. The trip with Encounter Overland was a classic. I travel a lot in Nepal. Good people, good tim good Hasch !

Such a beautiful video. --- I travelled to Kathmandu by road for the first time in 1979 and arrived there in December. I was in Asia for several years in total. --- I consider myself so blessed and lucky to have been able to experience and see all this.

It reminds me of my first trip along "The Hippie Trail" in 1976,

1974, a small holdall, not much money, solo from Istanbul to Kathmandu by local buses, staying in local inns. from there to Bangkok by plane (no passage through Burma in those days). then trains and hitching, to Singapore. didn't want to go back, so carried on... rustbucket ship to Perth, W.A. I arrived a matter of days before they shut down the free entry for Brits option (something I wasn't aware of at the time). astounded I did it, astounded I survived. the best bit for me, was Afghanistan, but certainly wouldn't want to be there now. lived in Oz for 18 years. now in Japan for 30.

Reminds me of he book "hippie" by paulo coelho,the route,magic bus,boys with long hair and girls with the tshirt flowerpower printed on it . 70's was golden era.Those were the time when people from all over the world came to Nepal for the enlightment and to sort out the unanswered questions of thier life. I sometimes regret being from 90's, and now fucking technology destroyed all of our hospitality,bonding and still the worst is yet to come.

It’s amazing to see westerners traveling so freely thru countries like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan back then... that wouldn’t be possible today.

had to smile when he said India was a crowded country, i traveled from London to Australia in 1977/78 and thought India crowded too. Just returned from a month in India ( January 2023) got a shock India is packed ! last visit was in 2000 , enjoyed Delhi and Calcutta but now it was just too much for me i fled to south India and spent my last ten days in peace. wonderful film conjured up many great memories , thanks.

I loved this documentary so much I didn't want it to end and was wishing for a part 2!

I did this trail back in ‘74... we stopped one night and camped in the desert in Afghanistan. We all took acid and one of our passengers wandered off in the middle of the night. We waited and looked for him but couldn’t find him. I always wondered what happened to him.

I wish I could travel back in time and do this

Loved the starting music and logo. Back in the day, when you heard that, you were usually in for a good programme.

I miss my old Nepal and love all tourists who are being enlightened since long back. Peace and care

🙏 thank you so much for this wonderful video as well as all lovers of Nepal . It makes me feel so thrilled, it touches my heart and got on opportunity to watch the back Kathmandu. I’m out of country so missing a lot of things of hometown.

Man, I wish I could travel back in time and visit all the beautiful places in Marocco, Afghanistan, India, Nepal when they were like they were back then...😌

From this video, I can only say, you people have a life of exploring. thanks for the documentation.

The World About Us was regular Sunday evening viewing. Thanks for the upload.

Anyone in this trip still alive!!! Such a great journy!!! I wish i were with them!!! Love it

Only 1977 and already a distant past - heck, most of these guys could still be around!

fantastic, loved it. COVID-19 had just forced me to return 6 months early from a 1-year overland trip from UK to Aus (well, Indonesia, as far as you can get by land/sea these days). Made it to southern Thailand via trans-Mongolian railway, China, Laos and Myanmar. Due to the virus, I'm now back home and spending all day watching retro travel stories such as yours to maintain my beleif that we shall all be able to travel again some day. Thanks for posting.

How things have changed. Great video. And what an adventurer the organiser is. Tremendous.

Watching this high ,hits on a totally different level

Great journey well documented, bravo! Took me back to my similar travels 10 years later, best thing I ever did.

1971 Magic bus to dehli from wood green £135.

Interesting video. I started travelling 40 years ago....what an adventure it has been.

All of you folks lots of love from Kathmandu,Nepal❤✌hope you folks all is well..

Today's generation should look about such golden history

I had forgotten all about The World About Us. I wonder when TV executives made the decision not to enlighten, educate or inform anymore.

Thank you very much on behalf of all Afghans

3 months in the back of that truck, that takes some perseverance. Must have been an amazing experience back then though. I have a 3 hour flight from where I’m living to Kathmandu and have popped over for a long weekend !

Amazing brought back happy memories travelling to Afghanistan and back

Nepal welcomes all of you..visit nepal for once in a lifetime.experience

did anyone take the "Magic Bus" from London to Kathmandu in the 1970s, I'm sure it was £25 for an open return ticket, I used to see the advert in NME for it and always wanted to take that trip, a few people who I knew who went there never recovered, or should I say readjusted to UK life, became full-on hippies or vanished, times were far simpler back then, buy an old bus, fix it up, advertise in the NME, when it was sold out set off, no special insurance, no nothing, just go and do it. . .what a great attitude these travellers had back then, little or no organisation and only a few reference books to read prior to going,

Fascinating. Thank you for sharing !

The preparations for this trip and the skills needed, imagine... The trip is an education surpassing what you are taught in schools. Amazing. Things were less complicated and more complicated in those days.

I wish i could go back in time and visit nepal again. Such a wonderful people and serving.

Namaste from Nepal

Love from Nepal♥️ Hippie era was very beneficial for Nepal♥️🇳🇵

Man what an experience. I wonder what kind of trip one could no nowadays that gives such a vibe

I did the trip by myself from KTM to Istanbul in '76.

Must have been a an amazing trip. Great documentary. Love the shots made in the sand storm.

Amazing...so captivating, fascinating and mesmerizing documentary. Everything is so perfect, if only the print would hv been better, but I understand,it's from long back in the time. You took us through the time around half of the world. I could recognise places in Turkey and India. Kashmir has a long history of hospitality and tourism, I find the same even now. I'm proud that only Asia has such wide array of geographical, colorful, cultural, religious and demographic diversity to offer to the world. Thanks for uploading. If someone has more such treasure please upload or give link

thanks for showing the time when hippie travelled. i felt like i was there :D

The days when a Westerner could cross these countries in relative safety. Kashmir 🥰

Thanks for the memorable documentary. I took the same land trip in 1972 by ship from Penang to Madras and further by land to Europe. Unfortunately I was travelling at a very low budget....USD2 per day. I could not afford a camera and therefore no pictures available....

Great to get a reminder of my solo overland trip to the Himalayas and India in 1975. Don't want to nit-pick but I can't imagine doing the trip any way other than how i did it which was very arduous but character-building. Most did it this way, by hitching half the way and then catching local buses. You were free to stop off and spend time, or go wherever you wanted to. I can't imagine paying the money to this as a group, and with no freedom. ("Cooking duties", "shopping duties", and putting out and packing tents again?) Of course, it wasn't reasonably possible to make a documentary about what most people did, which was to do the trip solo! A lot of this "tour" seems to cover many things I never saw and seem vaguely interesting - but frankly after 15 minutes of any kind of "guided tour" I get very bored and need to go off alone again. In short, this is definitely not how most people did the overland route to India.

I made this trip 1979 - 1980, but not with these guys. That would have sucked for a couple reasons. First, that truck would totally suck to travel in for months and months. I traveled using local transportation, old beat up buses (at times riding on top where you could stretch out on the luggage) and third class train tickets. The ride itself probably wasn't any better but the view sure as hell had to be better than a canvas topped cargo truck, good lord. Second, traveling with the same people, all westerners, going to the same places and doing the same things as a group? For three solid months? That would be maddening within two weeks tops.. And cooking your own food? Wth? Eating the local food (usually street food) is a big part of the traveling experience. Where is the adventure? This is an insulated guided tour. To hell with that. The adventure is in not knowing what lies ahead and immersing yourself in whatever comes. Eyes wide open, everything is new and different. It was like being on another planet, several other planets. It's the details and little things that make it an adventure like dealing with bus schedules and train schedules and finding that certain hostel and that cool as shit local cafe and dealing with local bureaucracy in getting visas for the next country...all that administrative all that finding out stuff, that's the journey, that's what traveling is all about, well the destinations too, but still you aren't really traveling unless you have both. Here's why: you're not just getting a train ticket, you are interacting with people in their culture and in so doing you get to directly experience that culture in the only way one can directly experience it. (The video still merits a thumbs up because they at least had the foresight to video document their trip and there are damn few of those. I'm just now struck with the thought of how cool it would have been to have had an iPhone back then.) I traveled by myself, meaning I didn't start the trip with anyone else but I never ended up traveling alone. It was easy to meet fellow travelers since budget travelers all stay in the same cheap hovel hostels, eat in the same cheap places, drink beers in the same divey bars, and so forth. Mind you that doesn't; mean one hostel, it means dozens of hostels, and hundreds of cafes, and bars (in Europe that is). There were always a couple cool travelers heading the same way and you just sorta grouped up. After a couple weeks we'd split up to take off in some other direction with another traveler heading that way. There was a current of travelers going west to east and the other way, from Australia/New Zealand heading to Europe, and the information and tips was real time current. I traveled like that for a year starting in London and overland to Kathmandu. We zipped through Iran as quickly as we could since this was just after the Shah had been deposed and the Ayatollahs were running the show and it was not a good place for Americans to be. A few months later the U.S. Embassy Hostage Crisis ensued. We also bypassed Afghanistan since the Russian induced civil war had just begun and took the southern route to Pakistan instead and spent a couple months each in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. It would have been great to have been able to travel overland through Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam to get to Thailand, but all those countries were closed to travelers at the time. So I took a cheap plane ride to Thailand some months there and in Indonesia. It was safe, it was fun, it was mind expanding, it was maturing, it was enlightening, it was a helluva lot of partying, and it was DIRT CHEAP. A dollar a day in some places. But the best part of it all was no matter where you went there were cool people who were happy to have you and show and tell how important/ancient/interesting/ and wonderful their piece of the world was. It was an incredible experience that has never left me, indeed I carry it with me still for it profoundly changed my worldview. I've been an eager adventurer ever since. It's a big ass wonderful world out there just waiting on you to take the first step and leave your familiar little ol' piece of ground where nothing changes and nothing is interesting. "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way." .

I went on this trip in autumn of 78 with an Exodus truck. Excactly like this! Anybody here knows Kevin Phillips? From London? Co driver on the trip.

Thank you so much to see my home land Pokhara,,it reminds me a lot ..at that time we had a king and good road from pokhara to Kathmandu,happy people and culture,,that we are going to losing soon,,,,

@mtdd1948 mesmerizing beyond measure, thankyou for taking us on such a wonderous journey, wish it were still possible today

Landscapes and waterways free of rubbish. And tolerance by default. I miss the past.

these traveller completed mission of their life ♥️

This is a beautiful, very informative and detailed documentary made with advanced camera and sound in late late 70s

I was there near that time. I think we left Istanbul in early September and arrived in Nepal about Dec of 78 and we were there in Nepal for 3 months and a week or so. We had to get our visa extended multiple times. At first in Kathmandu and then much longer in Pokhara where we had a house (more like a hut) near the lake.

Life goes but Tajmahal remains the same. What a beauty!

Cultures are so beautiful when you see them back in the day how did we lose it and end up with so much hate but back then seemed so chill

Amazing , I want to go on this journey

Good old days ❤...

This is mesmerizing.

Tried to go in ‘76 on an old London bus, but the plans fell through. In those days it was relatively safe. Not now. I knew two girls who hitchhiked from England to Afghanistan & back without incident in ‘76. Wouldn’t happen now. That’s progress for you.😮

Great upload. Thanks.

Great doco. It would have been an amazing time to pass through all of those countries conflict-free and untouched by tourism.

Thanks to David &Annie's efforts, captured the subcontinent after independence 🎉in 48

thank you for amazing video...omg how prisicious 😊😊😊love from nepal

I wish more than anything I could’ve been 18-21 in 1979 😭😭😭

"and every school boy knows a camel carries water in its humps" ..indeed! what a journey, I wouldn't have believed people would chooose to spend 3 months on a truck ...wow

Beautiful documentary

A truck? We used to dream of travelling in't truck. Went overland alone in 1976 by train, bus, hitching etc. I arrived in India the very week that Charles Sobragh was finally caught by the police in Agra. Whew!

i loved it..🥰.dammm all the way on truck to nepal,amazing.

I love that guy with the glasses he seems to get everywhere

Really loved . From nepal

😅i made the overland trip from Corfu to Kathmandu in 71 on Mercedes streetcar bus driven by a couple of Irishmen. I was 19 years old when i started the trip twenty when I arrived in Kathmandu. The 15 to 20 others on the bus were mostly young europeans

He rhymes off all their jobs descriptions, being a cockney was a job" two cockney lads "

Remember: Despite the Cold War this was a very peaceful era when these countries could be travelled with comparably few manmade hazards

Pure adventure no smartphone

Crazy! Travel with printed maps and no GPS or phones.

They must be led zeppelin fan😄 love from nepal

man, makes me dream. when self-growth and discovery clearly fucking meant something. full on immersion in nature and culture so foreign that every day can change you, every new place and people leave a vivid impression and the potential to alter how you look at the world, must have been so inspiring. now we're just told to read sodding Twelve rules for life and suck it up. to hustle soullessly and endlessly in the face of capitalist excess, environmental disaster and social and economic decline. must have been glorious to feel so free from it all for a few months, thanks for this awesome documentary x

watching this during quarantine being bored as fuck, great documentary to kill the time :)

Where can I find more documentaries like this

This video makes me jealous i wish i have been with them

Would be lovely to hear the thoughts and reflections of any of the travelling group?

Heard about this route in the book written by paulo coelho hippie ...

hashish saved my life the hippie trail was magic

32:30 So sad that this wonder was destroyed by the Talibans. The world has changed indeed.

Mike is master of the understatement

Liked the narration.

What a trip! There were lucky. I wouldn't want to travel through Iran this days..

thanks so much for precious sharing

I would love to see a video of the travellers in the film getting together and reminiscing about the journey and their thoughts on countries today like Afghanistan and Iran. Could anyone make this possible?

Beautiful ❤

I will stick to my yearly 2 weeks in benidorm thank you

Awesome gpod to see the 70s again

KZfaq Recommended After 3 years

This makes me think of Midnight Express

The Kurdish people are amazing❤

Of all the visa run destinations from Japan, I liked Nepal best. The food was disgusting but the people were really nice.

Iam anshu from India nainital i went to kathmandu when I was two

Wonderful adventure. Thank you for posting. Maybe in the future don't use those weird "stabilizing" plug-ins when converting. It gave several scenes a bizarre look.

upload another part please