Hippies Spoilt Tour

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31652, 11 April 1968, Page 2

Hippies Spoilt Tour

(from Our Own Ktporttr/ TIMARU, April 10, Drug-addiction from Kabul (Afghanistan), the international Hippie centre, to Vietiane (Laos) was making travel difficult for Westerners, Miss Juliet Fancourt, of Timaru, said on her recent return from overseas. Hippies from Western countries had given a dreadfully debauched picture of the Western way of life. Miss Fancourt, who was abroad more than two years, said the highlight of her tour was an expedition from London to Delhi. The group she was with left on a prepaid motor trip, but in Ankara (10 days from London) advice was received that the tour company had gone bankrupt. The tourists, who had each paid $2BO for the trip, took control of the vehicle, drove to the Blaek Sea, and crossed into Iran. The next leg was by rail to Meshed, in the heart of Iran, then by bus, oil tanker and pony carriage into Afghanistan. Miss Fancourt, who has a smattering of Farsi, the language of Persia, completed this phase with little difficulty. “Nightmare” Then followed a “nightmarish” journey from Kabul to Katmandu, in Nepal. From Kabul, Miss Fancourt went to Peshawar (Pakistan)

and flew to Lahore, Karachi, Bombay and Delhi. She visited Simla on behalf of her mother (Mrs T. L. Fancourt), Dominion chairman of the New Zealand branch of the Save the Children Fund, who was concerned about the plight of the Tibetan refugees. Miss Fancourt inspected the organisation’s home in Simla, after which she continued to Benares, breaking her journey at the Buddhist town of Sarnath, where Buddha preached his first sermon.

She and her companions stayed at monasteries there and at Sonada, sleeping on hard, wooden beds, and drinking quantities of buttered tea. From Sonada, which is south of Darjeeling, Miss Fancourt’s party went to Calcutta, hunched up on a luggage rack in a carriage of a third-class Indian Railway’s train.

The next stop was Bangkok, and then she travelled by rail to Vientiane. For part of the way Miss Fancourt was conveyed by rickshaw to the Mekong River, where she climbed into a canoe. This was swept down the river when the outboard motor on the craft failed, but disaster was averted. For two months and a half she was in the Papua-New Guinea highlands, as assistant presiding officer for the national elections for the House of Assembly. She was on patrol for three weeks, and travelled about 70 miles in the outbacks, visiting polling booths and taking the villagers’ votes by whisper, through an interpreter, and speaking pidgin English

“The villagers have slavishly adopted the Australian method of preferential voting," said Miss Fancourt Miss Fancourt, who is a graduate of the University of Canterbury, taught at secondary schools in Palmerston North before leaving for overseas. She hopes to take up social welfare work In PapuaNew Guinea, when she returns there next year to be married.