Remembering the trail of hope and tears

Sep 12 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

The Beatles with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi _320

Petrol was only 10p a gallon in Iran. The boys packed their ice cream-style van with 60 gallons in cans inside and on the roof – a rather hazardous arrangement. But they survived, eventually reaching Katmandu in mid-May, having suffered dysentery.

On the way back, they camped off a desert highway in Iran. “We really rounded the whole trip off that night,” remembers Tom. “We were talking about our next expedition. Phil and I were going to the Rockies. That night Phil and Ken slept inside the van. Peter and I slept on the luggage rack in big sleeping bags.

“I awoke and saw the huge sun rising on the horizon and thought what a fantastic feeling it was to be 20 and to have had all those experiences. Life was just about to happen. I put my head back on the spare wheel which was acting as my pillow. Suddenly all the windows were smashed and all hell broke out. I sat up and we saw these two characters hurling rocks at the van. I got the sleeping bag down to my waist and Peter was standing up on the van.

“He was shouting that they had a gun. Suddenly it felt as though a boulder with a point had fallen out of the sky and right into my sternum. A bullet had gone between my shoulder blades and cut the spinal cord in two. But I was still conscious and able to shout and wave my arms. As I put my hands down, I felt these cold lumps of jelly. They were my legs. I couldn’t feel them. Peter jumped off the van and chased the two across the fields. When they were about 20 yards, they turned round and faced him with the gun. That moment is etched in my memory. There were these three silhouetted characters. I knew instantly that this could be it. But they fled.

“When Peter got in the van, blood was everywhere. A bullet had gone through the van and Ken’s head. It stopped just before his brain.”

The uninjured pair drove Tom and Ken to a nearby Red Crescent hospital. They arrived at Walton Hospital in early June. Ken recovered, but it was decided not to operate on Tom. The bullet, which eventually disintegrated, was left in his back.

“You know when I look back I only think good things about the Hippy Trail,” he says. “It was a fantastic preparation for life with all the different cultures – that cliche, a fantastic once-in-a-lifetime’s journey. It did end very badly for me, but that could have happened crossing the road in England. I was a very fit sports fanatic, who took lots of chances. I got my injury doing something | really enjoyed. I have never felt bitter about it because of the experiences I had had up until then. I would have felt cheated if I had suffered my injury on a motorbike or falling out of a tree.”

In 1975, Phil and Tom, now the coordinator and editor of Altogether Now, the disability-focused magazine and website, did go on a four-month tour of Canada and the USA.

With wife Lyne, 51, Tom has three children Joe, 17, and twins Dan and Ben, 15 and for many years, worked as sub-editor on the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo. He still writes the I Can Do That column for the Echo.

But sometimes at home, when those old melodies are sweet, he smiles, as his memory roams down the Hippy Trail.

davidcharters@dailypost.co.uk

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