Paddy’s bus – The Indiaman

The Overlanders and the Hippie trail

A forward from across the seas, of an incredible bus journey, popped up the other day on my phone, promptly delivered by our ever-efficient news delivery man these days – the popular Whatsapp. More forwards came, together with requests to check out and detail the story behind it. The Indiaman was new to me and amusing, and so I got to work on it right away, having nothing better to do at the start of our long weekend. Usually, we would be out, traveling on this Independence Day weekend, but the virus had put paid to all those plans. The story morphed to much more than the bus as it turned out and well, I have to narrate it to you. So, my friends, hop on, strap on your seatbelts, and let’s go for a long ride!

Remember the ancient silk road which we talked about earlier? The was the rough overland route (actually a network of routes) from Constantinople to China. From Istanbul, one could also go west, taking a couple of ferry hops, through Europe, and potentially reach the UK, crossing the Channel. In the same fashion, one could hit the roads and go eastwards and traverse on to Nepal, many popular cities in India, even as southerly as Kovalam and Kanyakumari or through to the beaches of Thailand. The roads are still there and that is the long route we are going to traverse today, learning along the way about Paddy’s Indiaman, Albert, and the Hippie trail.

The ancient road had seen all kinds of traffic, starting with the dromedaries and later the modern Camel, even horses and donkeys at times. I had written about the incredibly resilient ship of the desert, the Camel, a fascinating quadruped. For eons, they ferried man and goods within and from Asia to China and back, pausing at caravanserais, to look through droopy eyes and wryly taking in the new master which was driving them back and forth, that being the man astride. The animal would watch them profit, would see them happy, sad or often fighting for the spoils of trade. As journeys got repeated, it would see changes along the way, new towns, cities and new chieftains, and of course, more fights. Not that it cared!

Soon the Camel got superannuated, for the long trail lost its popularity when man conquered the oceans. New long-distance sea lanes were established and large floating objects manufactured by man, called ships, took over the global trade. The Silk Road fell into disuse, barring short stretches which were now demarcated by national borders and horses took over the shorter distance travel. The only people who traversed it were merchants and many refugees, such as the much-decried gypsies, perhaps Banjaras from Rajasthan who partly curved south to establish the lands of the Kurds and those who moved on to Europe to become the Romanies.

While it was the trunk road connecting India, China, Persia and the Western kingdoms of Asia, it also served to be the route taken by Alexander for his Persian and Asian overtures. Not only did he use it to conquer and establish his kingdoms, he also built settlements all the way through to India, settlements which endured and created strong Indo-Greek kinships. The Silk Road was instrumental in mingling thought, religion, cultures and produce. The silk trade continued to flourish until it was disrupted by the collapse of the Safavid Empire in the 1720s.

Hundreds of years passed, the caravanserais (caravan rest houses) fell into disrepair and became ruins, the roads were by now hardly transport worthy, though gloomily waiting for new travelers. And then the new global wanderers came, a decade following the great war (WW II) and at the start of the Vietnam War. While the first overland expedition was by a bunch of British students who went from the blighty to Singapore in 1956, the first commercial venture Indiaman was started by one Paddy Garrow-Fisher in 1957, well before the Hippie trail became popular.

Strange, the choice of the name, for the Indiaman was actually a term used to depict the many armed, three-masted ocean-going trade ships and there were east Indiamen and west Indiamen, depending on the direction it took from Europe! What Paddy started in Britain was not one of these ocean goers, but an unarmed bus service (in his brochure, he does mention that those ships were his inspiration). Let’s now get to know Paddy and hear his tale.

Paddy, an ex RAF man had served in India and the Middle East, had always been fascinated with India and married Mary, an Indian. After the war, he could be seen traveling between Britain and India as an automobile spare parts salesman (they say he went back and forth on his bike!). As his business grew, he contemplated a larger vehicle plying between Britain and India and hit upon the idea of towing a caravan, but then settled on a bus to lug along his auto spares as well as some paying travelers.

Let’s go back in time for a moment and check how overland travelers did it before Paddy’s bus. Flying by plane was only for the super affluent and sea travel was expensive and time-consuming. There were people who drove from London to Pakistan and it appears that lodges in Asian areas had notice boards that announced travelers and their itinerary, soliciting for passengers who were willing to share the cost.

Paddy purchased a second hand AEC Regal III, the Lama, 9.6 liters diesel engine and all, with Harrington’s (of Hove) coachwork, from Valliant of Ealing and dating to 1949. That was the original Indiaman, overhauled by AEC and adapted to meet the demands of the long trek to India, reducing the seats from 33 to 24, taking out the last row to accommodate luggage and tents/cooking equipment. In April 1957 he drove out (all 12,000 miles, back and forth!) with the first busload of 20 fare-paying passengers to Calcutta. For the few people who dared to join him for the many weeks or months the bus would take to reach Calcutta ( the bus reached Calcutta on June 5th and back in London on Aug 2nd, 16 days behind schedule due to a closure of the Pakistani border to Iran due to an influenza epidemic), it was going to be the journey of a lifetime and the first time a bus ever made it back and forth, soon to be featured on TV and various newsmagazines. This was the start of the magic-bus journeys of the ‘overlanders’ or the bus-packers to India!

And thus, the Indiaman legend was born. Many passengers belonging to the countries down under living in Britain wanted to take a trip only up to India (and sail on to Oz or NZ), but he found no dearth of passengers wanting to go back to London. Adjusting his schedules, he set the plans in such a way that his East-bound journeys started in Autumn and West-bound journeys in Spring. Paddy was incidentally called mashe Paddy (Mashter - master – or teacher/leader in Indian parlance). Since that first trip, all Indiaman drivers were called mashe for master. While his wife Mary accompanied him on the first trip, later Indiamen buses had Indian lady hostesses!

He would charge £167 for the round trip, a bargain price which included not only food and passable accommodation, but sightseeing along the way. He required passengers to be adventurous, willing and cooperative, inoculated and insured, and join only after getting their doctors clearance for the rigors the journey would entail. The Route was from London through to Paris, through the black forest to Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, to pause for the fascinating sights, smells, tastes and sounds of Istanbul, thence to Ankara, Adana, Iskenderum, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, the holy lands at Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Baghdad, the sights of Persia at Tehran, Qum, Kerman, Quetta, Panjnad in Pakistan’s Punjab, Lahore, Amritsar, glorious Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal, Jaipur and its palaces and finally Bombay (on the Bombay run, otherwise through to Calcutta) where its passengers stepped off gingerly, with creaking knees and cramping bodies.

As times went by, the vehicle was upgraded to a Mandator lorry chassis with an 11.6-liter engine and air brakes. Airconditioning was added, so also automatic lubrication (previous trips required maintenance stops for greasing) and tire inflating (Some deflation was required for desert sand, and once crossed, reinflation for regular roads) equipment. Bottogas cooking equipment, an Espresso unit for coffee and boiled water, etc. were available. A stainless-steel sink was fitted, and ample storage space for the 20 passengers was a prerequisite. Two or sometimes three buses operated in a convoy according to some reports. The trip was usually expected to take 60 days. Peter Moss the Anglo-Indian traveler did the second run, details the trip party in the video linked here and wrote about it, in his book, (which I have not been able to source yet) -The Indiaman: When the Going was good by Land and Sea. Who were the other passengers who frequented these buses? As it appears, they were not just people from down under or Americans and Brits, but also Indian and Pakistani immigrants.

A lovely report on the return trip from Bombay (March 22, 1961 to May 20^th 1961) is provided by one W J Kinson in the Marconi Mariner. He states that it started at the Gateway of India with Paddy giving the passengers a pep talk, two days before the trip, and as they meet for the tour. They start with a tour of Bombay, in a 3 bus convoy with 53 passengers, Mary, Paddy’s wife is found adept with bargaining for fruits, etc., they see Ajanta, Ellora, then camp outdoors, sip a bit of whiskey, sleep and swim at the officer’s club in Jaipur, meet the Raja of Bundi, go on to Agra and see the sights at Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj, New Delhi where they even see Egypt’s Col Nasser giving a speech. They stop for a week as many people have caught dysentery, and then proceed on to Punjab, see the Golden temple, through Lahore and to Panjnad, Jacobabad, through the Bolan pass to Quetta, and to Baluchistan. After enduring a dust storm at Bam, they camp outdoors to sleep, cooking dinner over pans and primus stoves. Through to Mahan and Kerman, hit by hail storms, till they reach Yazd. During the run to Isfahan in Persia, Paddy’s bus has a broken spring and passengers are transferred to the other two. Off to Tehran, a 290-mile trip, food on the way is wonderful, they see the peacock throne (a mock-up I presume) and later on, have a row with the police at the border. Off to Tabriz, and into Turkey. Close to one month on the road already! Escorted by the military to Erzurum, and then to Trabzon on the Black sea coast. The next stop is Ankara, and from there on to glorious Istanbul! More breakdowns along the way, axles and spring snap, but there are repair shops. Sofia is next, and into Topola in Yugoslavia, they bypass Zagreb, and enter Graz in Austria, heading for Vienna. From there to Ulm in Germany and next is Paris, then the ferry ride to Britain and finally London, as the second month on the road draws to a close! A trip to remember…

The Indiaman operated throughout the 1960s and quickly many others followed, starting with Swagman (dubbed the Asian greyhound), the Roel, Penn and the silver (the slug) express tours and dozens more. Not to be left behind, brave individuals modified their vehicles to travel on their own and smaller groups modified their vans and some even used modified fire engines. Individual travelers sometimes joined the tour from Istanbul, hearing about it from the notice boards in the famous Lale restaurant (the Pudding shop) near the Blue mosque in Istanbul.

Another of those famous buses which went back and forth was named Albert. This bus made 15 trips between India and UK and some four trips between London and Sydney, it had extras such as a reading and dining room at the lower deck, sleeping bunks, fan heaters and upgraded interiors making it a luxury coach. Albert went on successfully until the routes were blocked. Albert is still around in Australia, but a showpiece.

So that was how the Hippie trail was started, and the world started to take notice. The Hippie Trail quickly got into a full swing, a path followed by many thousands in the mid 60’s through to the 1970s. Until the issues started in Iran, the entire route was quite peaceful and no major issues were reported. Many seeking illumination and peace took these nirvana express buses on the Hippie trail pioneered by Paddy, upon which would later travel many more luminaries. The hippies were those who chucked away their jobs and stated that materialism was bullshit, they wanted to discover or rediscover themselves, attain inner peace and Eastern spirituality was the perfect answer. Indian gurus had already been roaming around in Europe and America propounding Yoga and meditation. Aussies and New Zealander hippies came to Bali in Indonesia and came to India from the other direction.

Oh! They were some travelers, the roads would have muttered, unkempt, long-haired, confused and perpetually searching. Searching for what? They themselves had no idea. Some muttered that they were looking for nirvana, others wanted enlightenment, some just wanted to get away from a rat race, while a few were more enthusiastic about a catalyst which would show them the short cut to nirvana, drugs of all sorts. The Beatles had told them that India had the gurus who would show them the path, the returnees from Kathmandu had told them where the smokes were available.

The road which was once a trader’s domicile thus became the Hippie trail. Vehicles of all types – beat-up cars, double-decker buses, omnibuses, local relics, the popular VW van, American jalopies and what not now descended on the silk route. Now it was the turn of the road to be confused, with an array of badly maintained vehicles and a whole lot of confused people with colorful attire - people with eager and bright eyes moving in the Easterly direction and a lot of tired, disheveled, glassy-eyed characters returning back west! Above all they had little money, going in or coming out, though they were not averse to doing some work along the way, for their upkeep. As these cross-country vehicles crammed the roads, following the buses, some going below sea level into the dead sea area and then driving up to the high mountain passes of the over 12,000-mile round-trip journey, many broke down and never made it with their wrecks littering the route. The "Overlanders," as they were called, cared not.

The caravanserais gave way to Hippie hotels along the entire route where they met and exchanged new ideas, information about new gurus, new beaches, new watering holes, new types of drugs, and most importantly contacts. These new nomads traveled light and were sometimes hardly clothed, decent attire being a thing of the past. Personal hygiene was not important, and they looked unkempt with their long and shaggy hair, and bright ill-fitting clothes purchased along the way, a dead giveaway.

The Turks, the Iranians, the Afghans, the Pakistanis, the Nepalis and Indians took note and laid out a welcome for the new low-heeled tourist, the Hippie, a.k.a the anticonformist beatnik ("Beat" came from the New York underworld slang—the world of hustlers, drug addicts and petty thieves and beat stood for beaten down, downtrodden masses). The hippies wanted to sample everything without inhibitions, offering themselves in the bargain for they had nothing else, they wanted to experience new foods, new religions, new forms of intoxication, new forms of physical movements such as the yoga asana, mental exercises such as meditation and new forms of schooling which involved submission to an Asian Guru who told them at times, to do wild and crazy things. But they did not grumble, protest or refuse. They experienced the new mysticism too. There was one unique characteristic of this new tourist, they loved to interact with the local populace along the way, they wanted to be the Roman in Rome, and wow, how they interacted! They did it well, for all of 20 years!

For us in Kerala the sayip (Sahib) and madamma (Madame), forgotten after the British left, reappeared, but this time around, very inquisitive and affable, willing to do anything and sans any airs! Kovalam was where the Hippie scene soon became active, Ayurveda infused. Beyond the beach, a few who wanted to imbibe the local traditions could be seen here and there in Trivandrum, some even traveling by train and asking curious questions. New tourist hotels sprung up, catering to the foreigner’s needs (of all kinds). Magazines as well as newspapers featured them with marked regularity.   

Dev Anand’s ‘Hare Rama hare Krishna’ was a movie which showed us a bit of the wild scene in Kathmandu and well, the song Dum Maro Dum, became a classic. It was actually based on the story of a Canadian Indian Hippie girl Janice (Jasbir) Dev had met at a party. She did not want to do any film and a frantic search in Bombay resulted in the discovery of our American returned Zeenie baby. The song became a cult hit and batik was in! Ah! Those were some days…

It started to affect us too, for in colleges listening to the music from the west became hip and cool, LP records from Beatles, Joan Baez and the Rolling stones started to spin on the gramophone spindles, replacing Mukesh, Yesudas and Lata. The long-haired unkempt Buddhijeevi (wise man looks) look hit the youth (local appi hippi) and the cross bodied handloom cloth bag, scraggly beard and long hair was a dead giveaway of those characters who could at will launch into quotes from Kafka, Camus and Marx. Dressing started to change, it was at first narrow bottoms, then bell-bottoms giving way to elephant bottoms and to match were those colorful long collared shirts.

Toms took note and we saw the character Appi Hippi in Bobanum Moliyum cartoons regularly on Manorama weekly. Malayalam movies started to feature hippies and wild bars, recall the song Hippigalude nagaram in Postmane kananilla? There were many more.

But then again, we never heard about the Indiaman!

It was not to last, the hippie trail closed in early 1979 when Khomeini's Islamic revolution in Iran took place and later in the same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Overland travel puttered to a stop. Soon it was the era of the Jumbo’s and the 747’s screamed through the skies laden with tourists, now rich enough to afford all that, to destinations like Goa and Thailand.

Whatever happened to Paddy? Garrow-Fisher and the Indiaman ceased operatons about 1970. He passed away in 1975, perhaps a contended man. The original Wood St office is now the home of Tour India Ltd, whilst the original firm is at 37 Fife Road. Although known as Paddy being from Ireland originally, the former RAF man Garrow-Fisher was called Oswald Joseph, as in OJ. Seems he probably had a brother W Garrow-Fisher who designed the twin-engine Cunliffe-Owen Concordia planes, of which one was purchased by the Nawab of Bhopal (Thanks Sludge G for all this information!). Mary passed away in 2009 and the Fishers are survived by their daughter Maureen.

A wise man may wonder, why did these characters travel all the way to India when you could get any of the drugs in London and when there were a number of local Gurus? Yes, many did just that, but a large number took the pilgrimage, the quest to India, something which had to be done in your midlife! In American they have many such traditions, like their spring break trips, perhaps this was for the middle age. My favorite authors who cover these aspects beautifully are Herman Hesse and of course James Michener’s ‘Drifters’. For us Easterners though, these long-haired, free-spirited wanderers were ambassadors of a liberal society we knew little about and it was you, modern nomads, who instilled the desire and hunger to travel and explore, in our own minds! Thank you, my friends!

And one of these days, I will tell you another incredible story, that of an Indian who bicycled to Sweden, to reunite with his wife, a true story.

References

The hippie trail: A history - By Sharif Gemie, Brian Ireland

Indiaman - Journey of a lifetime  

Photos - Indiaman.101, Google images, etc all original posters acknowledged with many thanks