OPEN TIME CAPSULE
Inside the 1970s Traveller's Time Capsule
So it was, that our passports, visas, clothes, 35mm photographs and trip memorabilia were sealed and locked away in an old zinc-lined traveller's chest. This chest became a 1970s - traveller's time capsule stored in the attic of my parent's home in Wiltshire, until opened more than 40 years later
A BIT of a Trip
In early 1975, together with my then wife Gail, we left the UK in search of adventure in distant lands and cultures. Our intention was to drive "Ferdi", our VW Kombi (a converted Dutch postal van), overland across Europe and Asia and then to catch a boat for a new life in Oz.
Our planning was helped by the BIT Overland Guide to India, known as the 'Hippie Trail Bible'. Detailed road descriptions were obtained from the AA Route Planning Service in Basingstoke; these, together with informative descriptions on local conditions, made navigation easier and safer.
Possibly the most challenging roads were to be found in Iran's Great Salt Desert and the corrugated desert roads of Pakistan. The combined information from BIT and the AA enabled us to decide where to go, how to get there and who to trust on the way.
26,041
KILOMETERS TRAVELLED
15
COUNTRIES VISITED
The BIT intelligence network
While the AA provided a very professional route planning service, the BIT network was a highly effective human intelligence network with its operational centre located in a fume-filled basement off Ladbroke Grove.
As soon as you entered the BIT 'office' you were hit by a heady cocktail of powerful vapours - the solvent from the BIT reprographic machine, freshly smoked hash, and the distinctive odour of stray pets and recent sex.
INFORMATION SHARING
Whether you were a hippie or a traveller, you were just as welcome and free advice was always available.
BIT was the product of a generation of young intrepid travellers simply wanting to help other like-minded travellers stay safe, while experimenting with alternate life styles.
Drugs could always be found if that was your thing, but so was sex, music and the biggest and perhaps most mind expanding drug of all, travel.
