Holy Stoners

A holy man of the Temple of Pashupatinath, Kathmandu

Those who are looking for an Intro to the 60s, might like to take a look at my earlier Post,
1967 - A Snapshot.

In that Post I mentioned that "In the 60s, the vast new consumerism produced some good stuff, including the Weekly Color Magazine.  All the major newspapers had them, and they actually included some fine journalism - as well as fascinating portraits of the times.

"... one example - "The Daily Telegraph" - had sent a reporter and photographer out on the Hippie Trail to Kathmandu, or at least India. (Yes, Virginia, in those days people could travel on a shoestring, with a pretty good chance of being attacked by nothing worse than gippy tummy.)

"They had dozens of photographs of individual travellers, with amazing tales of how they travelled, smoked dope, lived rough, communicated with the locals - in a word, lived!"

The reason why the Hippies travelled East, to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan (at that time a peaceful agrarian society whose Muslim tradition of hospitality meant that Western travellers were welcomed and invited into people's homes) and India (apart from fun and frolics), was to look for something more meaningful in life than "a steady job with a pension".

In India in particular, with Hinduism, more than twice as old as Christianity, and Tibet, with Buddhism, they often found what they sought - and lots of thoughtful people are still finding it.

Along the way they found many ancient and exotic traditions - 

Saddhus, holy men who take a vow of poverty...

... and commune deeply with the natural world

As I report in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s", somewhere in the mid-60s, "one of my teenage-philosopher friends crossed paths with an old soldier who had served in Egypt before World War 2. `You young lads, you think you’re on to something new,' he chortled. He had discovered the joys of hashish while serving in the British Army on scorching desert patrols and backstreet shakedowns, and had received regular supplies through the mail ever since. His Majesty never had a more devoted servant."