The Hashish Trail - Chapter Three - Leaving Canada

Gidonia and I left as scheduled in September 1969 and travelled by train to Montreal.Travelling across Canada by train was one of the most educational experiences of my life. The grandeur of our vast country was seen firsthand and the changing culture from West to East became apparent. The train trip itself was one long party! I remember being wakened up one morning to the porter shaking me and telling me I needed to get back to my own berth. I was embarrassed and hurriedly bid my sleeping mate good morning and fled to my own bed. Later I learned that they could have kicked me off the train for such loose behavior. Every evening we made our way to the bar car and it was there that we met two very fine young Montreal boys who worked on the train. They invited us to visit them when we arrived in Montreal. This was the first of many occasions when people invited us into their homes and helped us find our way in a strange place. We feared nothing, and I believe we kept our guardian angels very busy as we spontaneously followed our hearts.From Montreal we flew to London, where we saw all the tourist attractions. While there, we discovered that the musical stage production of Hair was playing in Piccadilly Circus. Not only did we see the show, but actually partied with the cast after the show! Hair was spectacularly "Hippie in theme and answered many of our questions regarding the beliefs of hippies, such as the right to dress, wear our hair, talk and in general live not according to the accepted way of life and fashions of our time, but rather according to our own individual tastes and preferences (always of course within the boundaries of peace and love). We began to search for other travelers who could teach us more about this new and appealing lifestyle.
From London we flew to Madrid, Spain. We became irate when young Spanish males followed us, endlessly pleading with us in Spanish to spend some time with them. Or at least this is what we assumed, as we frantically looked up words in our little Spanish to English dictionaries. We did end up partying with two young Spaniards, but the language barrier proved insurmountable, and in our sophistication we thought they were silly and naïve. We did, however, learn that the place to meet hippie travelers in Spain was Torremolinos, and once more we headed south to Spain’s ocean play land. There we met a woman about our age whose name was Eva. We spent three weeks getting to know her and spending time in her home. We also purchased a 1963 Peugeot from a man named Carl who we met over Sangria one balmy afternoon. As lovely as Torremolinos was, we had a quest; through the grapevine we heard that hashish could be purchased at rock bottom prices in Morocco, so we boarded the ferry for Algiers. At our hotel we met a young couple just returning from trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal. They told of Government hashish stores in Kathmandu, of Sherpas who served as guides on treks, and of warmhearted Nepalese families living along the trekking routes who would love to have you stay with them for the night, feed you and send you on your way refreshed and happy, and all this just to get a glimpse of North American culture.They related their near death experience as dysentery ravaged their bodies; they were many days’ walk from the nearest clinic and had no strength to get there. It was a passing Nepalese man who eventually saved their lives, took them home with him. His family then nursed them back to health. Hearing these two young people tell their stories set up a yearning in Gidonia and me to travel to the Far East, and just maybe the hashish in Algiers could finance the trip! (Note: A Sherpa is a member of a people originally from Tibet who live on the southern slopes of the Himalayan range in Nepal and Sikkim. Sherpas are noted for their mountaineering skills and many of them work as guides for mountaineers or hikers in the Himalayan range.)