Remembering the trail of hope and tears

Sep 12 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

As a radio documentary recalls The Beatles starting the Hippy Trail 40 years ago, a later follower, who was shot by bandits, tells of his fantastic trip. David Charters reports

MIDDLE-CLASS parents, whose Sunday brogues crunched the gravel to the Gothic-arched doorways of Anglican churches, were worried about their sons and daughters.

Back at home, where beef was slowly spitting in the oven, the young ones were sitting in the lotus position on foam-padded prayer mats in their bedrooms circled by joss sticks – growing their hair, scratching, humming in a holy manner and cultivating pimples, while seeking spiritual enlightenment of a sort not normally found along Tulip Avenue.

They called it meditation.

It was those Beatles from Liverpool to blame again. They had been dreaming with a sage called Revered Maharishi Bala Bramachari Mahesh Yogi Maharaja.

This was a fine, ink-pot-drainer of a name, except for the Yogi bit, which reminded some people of a cartoon character, given to describing himself as “smarter than the average bear”.

Anyway, The Beatles had met the giggling Maharishi in London in 1967, “the summer of love”. In the August, they were meditating with him in Bangor, North Wales, when their manager Brian Epstein died from a drug overdose.

In February, 1968, Paul, John, George and Ringo, their wives and girlfriends, and other pop luminaries, including the fey minstrel Donovan and Beach Boy Mike Love, as well as the actress Mia Farrow (recently estranged from her husband Frank Sinatra), arrived at the International Academy of Transcendental Meditation at Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas, to sit at the feet of the Maharishi, hoping for answers to the eternal questions.

The popular press in Britain, for whom any expression of mystical or spiritual feeling equalled going bonkers, could hardly contain its glee. The pilgrimage turned into a circus, though many truly believed that the gross materialism of the capitalist West was a block to inner awareness – citing the drastic decline in church congregations to support their argument.

George Harrison had plenty of money himself, but became an intelligent and sincere advocate of meditation and a true friend of the sub-continent. His Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 was the first example of rock musicians using their influence to raise money for the victims of war and famine.

Soon boys and girls from the west were seeking enlightenment in the east. Newspapers called it the Hippy Trail.

Indians, who remembered the rather stiff manners of the British Raj, were amused and bemused by the new generation with their kaftans, beads, bells, drugs, jeans and sandals. A reversal of attitudes had taken place.

To many Indians, the materialistic West promised much. The skyways were filled with easterners going west and westerners going east.

Now, as we approach the 40th anniversary of the Beatles going to India, Radio 2 is preparing an hour-long documentary on the Hippy Trail to be presented by the writer and broadcaster, Hardeep Singh Kohli, who travelled from the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to the tourist beaches of Goa.

Even now, somewhere along the way, you might still find stooped figures with grizzled beards under their Donovan caps. Ask them how they are doing and they’ll say, “Far out, man”.

However, the vast majority of hippies eventually cut their hair, married, entered the professions and swapped their marijuana joints for red wine and cheese-sticks.

Yet their legacy lives on in music, photographs, mysticism and old corduroy jackets hanging on a peg at the back of the cloakroom.

Back in 1974, the jackets were new and the jeans were fresh when four old boys of Ellesmere Port Grammar School, south Wirral, started what would be one of the most extraordinary and dramatic trips in the history of the Hippy Trail.

There they stood outside the faithful Bedford van. Now Tom Dowling, 53, is a journalist; Phil Wellings, 53, a senior police executive; Ken Stokes, 55, an electrician; and Peter Cooper, 55, also an electrician, who emigrated to Canada.

They were lads of their time – handsome young dogs, who loved football, rock and roll and girls.

These days Tom, once a bustling football midfielder, is seen smiling from his wheelchair, unable to walk after being shot in the back by an Iranian bandit on the return journey. But you will never hear this brave man complain.

To Tom, that trip along the Hippy Trail was something wonderful and precious, when hope was strong and the promise of life was eager. Its memory is vivid and near. The colours will never fade.

They were all members of the Ellesmere Port Boys’ Club football team. They set off on March 15, 1974, in the club’s Bedford minibus with their savings and hundreds of teabags from Typhoo, their sponsor.

“The van was a bit of a wreck and my brother Jim (a mechanic now 55) renovated it for us,” recalls Tom, then a cub reporter on the Ellesmere Port Pioneer.

“We painted it sky blue and spent a lot of time rigging up a great stereo-system in it – so that we could have music blasting out. There was a bit of a fight over this because one of the lads liked the Carpenters. I preferred the Moody Blues and the rock and roll style. Can you imagine us going over Afghanistan with Karen Carpenter blaring out – not the done thing at all. For the sake of our own image there were times when we had to play rock and roll – The Who, Kinks, Beatles, Rod Stewart, Rolling Stones and John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance.”

The route was through Belgium, Germany, Austria, old Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Two of them would usually sleep in the van with the other two in a tent.

Then they advanced through Turkey to Iran, into Afghanistan, over the Khyber Pass, through Pakistan, and on to Delhi.