Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India (edition 2007)

I was torn trying to star rate this book. It's a good read, and the author has a gift for using a few words to give the reader a fairly clear picture of persons he meets on the way. The premise is strong as well. It just didn't entirely gell for me as a story. Though some of the characters we get introduced to are quite memorable. ( )

Big regret of my life was that I was too young to be a real hippie. At least that is what I’ve always thought. But the more books I read about hippies, the less interesting they are. Turns out, it seems, most people who went off to become hippies either (1) quickly realized the search was futile or (2) are still out there somewhere, probably sitting in the park in San Francisco waiting for their next high. Maclean follows the road the hippies traveled to see what is there now and what hippies are still left out there doing their hippie things. He finds a few hippies, notably Penny, who struck me as a sad figure. It could have just been me, but Penny still felt very lost. And what’s there now? Tourists, tourists, tourists. Doesn’t look like I’ll ever hit the hippie trail. Not terribly sure I am really a hippie kind of person, anyway. ( )