Safarnameh A Traveller’s Journey Along the Hippie Trail

Safarnameh—an Urdu word meaning an account of a journey—is the story of Trevor Harrison’s overland trip from Turkey to India, a route taken by somewhere between 2 million and 6 million young people from Western countries during the 1960s and 1970s, until the Iranian Revolution and subsequent regional conflicts rendered the overland trek impossible. This first-person account amplifies, sometimes confirms, and occasionally challenges prevailing images of those who made the journey to India during that time.

Based extensively on written observations made at the time, the book explores the physical, psychological, and emotional impact of travelling and its lingering echoes. Woven throughout the book are comments and insights drawn from forty-eight in-depth interviews with people from several different countries who made the overland journey to India during roughly the same period. Though framed around a personal memoir, Safarnameh situates one individual’s experience in the broader historical, cultural, and socio-political context of the time.

About the Author

Trevor W. Harrison is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Lethbridge and former director of the Parkland Institute, a policy think tank located at the University of Alberta. Known for his wide-ranging interests, he is the author, editor, or co-editor of ten academic books. These include Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada (1995); The Trojan Horse (1995); The Return of the Trojan Horse (2005); Twenty-First Century Japan (2008); Against Orthodoxy: Studies in Nationalism (2011); Prairie Bohemian: The Life in Music of Frank Gay (2015); and, most recently, Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney’s Legacy and Alberta’s Right (2023). He is also the author of a book of poetry, Another Voice (Friesen Press, 2016). In recognition of his multiple achievements over the course of his career, he was the recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Academic Award from the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.