A Vanished Road Travelling Eastwards Through Distant Lands Now Changed Forever Veena Schlegel by Veena Schlegel 9781505563986, 1505563984 instant download after payment.

A Vanished Road is a travel story. It is an account of a journey overland through Middle Eastern countries to India in 1971. The world then was a very different place to the one it is today. The countries I and five travelling companions travelled through - by train, boat, bus, local indescribable vehicles and sometimes on foot - were untouched and unspoilt by tourism and other international influences. Television was still a novelty in western countries; here it was unknown. For most of the local people, the hippies travelling through, breaking that later quite well-trodden trail, were the first westerners they had ever seen. There were no maps or guidebooks. The only guide was the hippie grapevine and the pointing of a local's finger. Toby and Marianne Wheeler, founders of the famous Lonely Planet guidebooks, traversed this road a year later - a journey which provided the inspiration for the beginning of their venture. English was rare, other languages unknown, so communication took place on a different level - via the heart, via intuition. It was always a guessing game! Our experiences were varied and unique. Sometimes we were met by innocent interest and open-hearted generosity, sometimes by infuriatingly deliberate stonewalling, sometimes by suspicion and hostility. We needed to keep our wits about us and be very patient. It was usually a smile and a calm centeredness that got us through. The journey was physically and emotionally tough and demanding but the reward was a deeply touching and life-changing experience which cannot now be repeated. With the events of the last few decades - tragic in the case of Afghanistan - this road, with its unique flavour, has vanished forever.