Taliban, who? No, this is not an image from a bygone hippie flick. It is a picture of real hippies enjoying a few puffs of hashish on the roof of a cheap hotel in Peshawar in 1972. Yes, Peshawar.
Pakistan was an important destination that lay on what was called the ‘hippie trail’ – an overland route taken by young western and American bag-packers between 1967 and 1979 and that ran from Turkey, across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, usually ending in Nepal.
Numerous low-budget hotels and a thriving tourist industry sprang up (in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi) to accommodate these travellers.
The hippie trail began eroding after the 1977 military coup in Pakistan, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the beginning of the Afghan civil war (in 1979).