East of Home

by Peter Wolledge

English 420 pages 1 edition

What began as an adventure became a life In 1974, eighteen-year-old Peter Wolledge left England and travelled overland to India along the route that would come to be known as the Hippy Trail. From Istanbul, the road took him through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and eventually into an India that was still far removed from mass tourism. He found his way to Goa at the height of the counterculture, walked in the Himalayas, and travelled through Sri Lanka, Nepal and across Southeast Asia, from Burma and Thailand to Cambodia, Laos, Sumatra and the Philippines. India, however, became home. Wolledge settled in the Western Himalayas, where he built a life shaped by mountains, travel, photography, friendships, love and an enduring appetite for the road. Then, in 2016, that life changed abruptly. Arrested on a narcotics charge, Wolledge spent more than six years in a Delhi prison before being released on bail. It was there, amid the claustrophobia, deprivation and suspended time of incarceration, that this book began to take shape. Funny, candid, irreverent and sometimes startlingly dark, East of Home is both the story of an unconventional life and a portrait of a vanished era of travel.