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How the hippies’ Seventies search for enlightenment turned sour
For many, the journey East – as depicted in new BBC drama ‘The Serpent’ – ended in disillusionment and worse
Getting high: hippies on top of a bus in Kabul in 1971
Credit: Garofalo Jack
In 1961, the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg, along with his partner Peter Orlovsky, set off for India in search of enlightenment. Travelling to Paris, then Tangier, Israel, and Kenya, they finally set foot in Bombay – Ginsberg having prepared for his arrival by smoking grass scored from a shoeshine boy in Mombasa, and reading A Passage to India, the Ramayana, and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.