I’m Martin, a former Suspected Hippie in Transit

From 1971–1977, before Bill Gates and technology, this 72-year-old hippie (23 in 1971) rucksack travelled throughout West Asia (Iran, Afghanistan), India and Nepal, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and (hitchhiked) the Japans.

The result? Suspected Hippie in Transit: Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n’ Roll and the Search for Higher Consciousness on the International Trail, 1971–1977 , a personal memoir and musical celebration of the life and times of that era encompassing spiritual experimentation, personal growth and failure, geographic wonder, cultural anomalies, and political rebelliousness . Think Jack Kerouac goes to Asia.

I lived the rhythms of the music, serving as a poster boy for Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Grateful Dead, and Ram Dass while on a five-week, isolated and desolate trek to Mount Everest base camp, mindful of yogis in Rishikesh, indulging electrified psychedelics in tropical Goa, nude swimming in the backwaters of Sumatra’s pristine Lake Toba (Indonesia), and hitching and hanging with Norwegian hotties in Hiroshima.

The music and lyrics became integral to my Atman (Self), like Dylan, Harrison, and Jaggar at the Isle of Wight, 1969. For a time, I lived the dream referenced by John Lennon in God.

Today, I’m a retired psychiatric social worker who tended to the have-nots of society for four decades and now the father of special needs twin daughters. I am a changed man, now a self-confessed street philosopher.