On the Hippie Trail: going home
On my way home a number of peculiar incidents occured:
A bunch of 'hippies' in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Iran,
waiting to get access to the Iranian quarantine
camp (1968). After an outbreak of cholera in Pakistan, the Iranian
authorities closed the border. Weeks later, rumour reached Kabul that a quarantine camp had been opened. We moved to the Afghan-Iranian border, where a huge crowd was gathering. Unfortunately, the camp's capacity was rather limited. This meant endless waiting and chaotic scenes in the no man's land. After five days they finally let us in. Our group included a variety
of nationalities: American, British, Dutch, German, French and Swiss.
Some of these guys were my companions on the way home.
The bus between Mashhad and Tehran
ran into a flooded highway. It took a while before we could get across.
This Swiss truck - driving in convoy - gave us
a ride from the Iranian-Turkish border to
Istanbul. On the road at night, our driver noticed that one of his collegues had lost his trailer ("Du hast deinen Anhänger verloren!"). So, in the middle of the night, the unfortunate driver had to turn back, looking for his trailer and praying that the stray
waggon had not caused a serious accident. He was lucky to find his trailer alongside the road, without having inflicted any damage.
The train from Istanbul to Munich, somewhere between Belgrade and Zagreb. The
Yugoslavian police took me away for taking this picture. Railways were considered a
strategic object, the photographing of which was strictly forbidden. While the
train was about to leave - with my rucksack, but
without me - I managed to talk my way out of this precarious situation
and - hailed by my fellow passengers - jumped on the train just in time.
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© Hans Roodenburg (The
Netherlands), 2006
hansroodenburg.nl
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