Overview

"As they drove through the hot flat Iraqi desert, Patricia looked over at her husband. He was guzzling water; sweat was running down his neck; the outside temperature was way over 100; and their 1963 VW camper van had no air conditioning. ""Yikes,"" she thought. ""This is not how I pictured our honeymoon."" It was August of 1966. They had gone to Europe the previous summer after their wedding, and that trip had stretched into a two-year adventure that took them around the world on a bare-bones budget. In those days with no mobile phones, no Internet, and limited maps, they were out of contact with family for months at a time while dodging a cholera epidemic in Iraq, staying in a palace in Pakistan, meeting with a maharaja in his stately home in India, and floating on a barge down the Mekong River in Laos. The journey had become a way of life as they found themselves drawn into a culture of international overland travelers while exploring a world that was large, varied, and filled with people who were curious, welcoming, and generous."

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Can you imagine travelling for two years without a credit card, cell phone or internet connection? Travelling over 40,000 miles, across Europe and Asia, without an itinerary, a guidebook or a plan? Patricia Sullivan and her husband did this while carrying all they own in a duffel bag, an attache case and a small suitcase. At the end of two years, she still had a smile for everyone she met, a fascination with how other people lived and her marriage was stronger than ever. Sullivan has something to tell us about the 1960s, about the nature of travel, about the peoples of the world, about what it means to be American and, ultimately, what it means to be human. Sharif Gemie, Author of The Hippie Trail: A History Patricia Sullivan recounts in touching detail an epic round-the-world trip with her new husband Mick through Western Europe and across the Asian continent. In an era predating the hippie trail of the late 1960s, their spontaneous, unplanned journey-via boat, train, van, and sundry other means of transportation-immerses the reader in a world that in many cases no longer exists due to the ravages of war and the resulting destruction of cultural monuments and ways of life. Donna M. Brinton, author/consultant Patricia Sullivan writes about a world that is still unbelievably huge in its differences of geography and tradition. At the very beginning of our ultra-modern era the continuing seeds of awful political schism are there. And yet, the sensitive humility with which she describes her experience helps us to see that we can all connect through our deeply common humanity. Adrian Holliday, author of Intercultural Communication & Ideology and Contesting Grand Narratives of The Intercultural In her memoir Overland Before the Hippie Trail, Patricia Sullivan gives us an endearing, fascinating account of traveling the world on the cheap in the 1960s. She and her husband, newlyweds in their twenties, set out from San Francisco with little more than a plan to visit Europe, buy a van, and maybe pick up some teaching work along the way. They end up instead on a two-year journey that takes them from Europe to the Middle East to Asia as early pioneers on the Hippie Trail, stopping here and there in places that today seem at once impossibly remote but also hauntingly familiar. A charming and intimate story of a bygone era of travel. George Bishop, Jr., author of The Night of the Comet

"Can you imagine travelling for two years without a credit card, cell phone or internet connection? Travelling over 40,000 miles, across Europe and Asia, without an itinerary, a guidebook or a plan? Patricia Sullivan and her husband did this while carrying all they own in a duffel bag, an attaché case and a small suitcase. At the end of two years, she still had a smile for everyone she met, a fascination with how other people lived and her marriage was stronger than ever. Sullivan has something to tell us about the 1960s, about the nature of travel, about the peoples of the world, about what it means to be American and, ultimately, what it means to be human. Sharif Gemie, Author of The Hippie Trail: A History Patricia Sullivan recounts in touching detail an epic round-the-world trip with her new husband Mick through Western Europe and across the Asian continent. In an era predating the ""hippie trail"" of the late 1960s, their spontaneous, unplanned journey-via boat, train, van, and sundry other means of transportation-immerses the reader in a world that in many cases no longer exists due to the ravages of war and the resulting destruction of cultural monuments and ways of life. Donna M. Brinton, author/consultant Patricia Sullivan writes about a world that is still unbelievably huge in its differences of geography and tradition. At the very beginning of our ultra-modern era the continuing seeds of awful political schism are there. And yet, the sensitive humility with which she describes her experience helps us to see that we can all connect through our deeply common humanity. Adrian Holliday, author of Intercultural Communication & Ideology and Contesting Grand Narratives of The Intercultural In her memoir Overland Before the Hippie Trail, Patricia Sullivan gives us an endearing, fascinating account of traveling the world on the cheap in the 1960s. She and her husband, newlyweds in their twenties, set out from San Francisco with little more than a plan to visit Europe, buy a van, and maybe pick up some teaching work along the way. They end up instead on a two-year journey that takes them from Europe to the Middle East to Asia as early pioneers on the Hippie Trail, stopping here and there in places that today seem at once impossibly remote but also hauntingly familiar. A charming and intimate story of a bygone era of travel. George Bishop, Jr., author of The Night of the Comet"

Author Information

Patricia Sullivan lives in Berkeley, California. From 1980-2001, while she was teaching at the University of California Santa Cruz (1980-2001), she also taught for one year (1981-82) in China at the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute; conducted research in Vietnam (1993 and 1994) at Vietnam National University; and received a Fulbright grant to be the director of a masters degree program for Turkish teachers of English at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey (1997-1999). After retiring from UC Santa Cruz, she was hired by the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State as a Regional English Language Officer. In that capacity, between 2001 and 2007, she lived and worked in Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. After retirement she continued teaching short term workshops and classes in Mongolia, Guatemala, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vietnam. Her webpage can be found at https: //patriciansullivan.com.

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