Magic Bus by Rory Maclean Read Free Book Online

woman tells me. Clear confident eyes. Short, uncovered hazel bob. Nose stud. ‘Yesterday, we picked up Jeff and Terry. Today, Penny wants to join us.’
    â€˜We’re heading in the other direction,’ I say, trying to maintain order in the chaos.
    â€˜Why don’t you come along too?’ says Debbie, the second woman. Shoulders tanned and freckled. Air of Coppertone. ‘There’s always room in the back.’
    â€˜I’m sitting up front,’ says Penny.
    Behind them, I see our Metro bus drive away to the east.
    Treehouses is on the Mediterranean. I intended skipping Turkey’s south coast, both because it’s off the original trail and because no paved roads went there until the seventies. Instead, in under ten minutes, I’m hijacked to Olympos, a popular beach stop for modern backpackers.
    In a lot behind the bus station is their vehicle: a canary-yellowVW Camper. Perhaps the greatest automobile ever built. Mary bought it from a Newquay surfer, took a gap year from UCL and drove with Debbie across Europe to spend a couple of months under the sun.
    â€˜Whoa-wheee,’ Penny cheers again as the Camper gathers speed, breaking 45 miles per hour on the southern road. ‘This sure beats queuing for my pension at the post office.’
    The guys are from California, doing Turkey and the Holy Land. At eighteen or nineteen, they’re about the same age as were the first Intrepids though, unlike them, they haven’t left the ‘system’ behind. Terry tugs at the stub of his James Taylor ponytail with long, bony fingers and sends text messages home. A simple gold cross hangs on a chain round his neck. Jeff is curly-haired and baby-faced, a cross between Nick Cave and Jerry Seinfeld. He carries a Blackberry.
    South of Ankara, the steppe opens on to a wide khaki plain. Flights of plovers rise from the grasses. In the creases of low hills, tight hamlets gather like sand in folds of paper. At the edge of the new highway, villagers hold back their thin herds of cattle and wait for us to pass.
    With an arm around Debbie, Jeff watches the countryside roll by the window and says, ‘Get a load of this view. I keep thinking of friends stuck back in San Francisco.’
    â€˜Now that was a happening town,’ says Penny.
    â€˜Penny knew Ken Kesey,’ I tell them.
    Terry sniffs at the air. ‘I can still smell the burning brain cells,’ he says.
    â€˜Whose?’ ask the girls.
    â€˜A generation’s.’
    As we drive towards the sea, Penny tells them about Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who in 1964 partied across America on
Furthur
, a glowing orange, green and fluorescent pastel International Harvester school bus with no springs. Their acid-laced, media-savvy wanderings popularized for a new generation the idea of the youthful journey of self-discovery.
    â€˜Kesey’s trip started with Kerouac,’ she adds, pulling anotherroll-up from her small, black rucksack, taking out a lighter, leaning back in her seat.
    â€˜How’s that?’ asks Mary.
    I explain that Kerouac – as author of
On the Road
– was the father of the Beats and grandfather of the hippies. According to Ginsberg, ‘he was the first one to make a new crack in the consciousness.’
    â€˜I’ve read
The Dharma Bums
,’ volunteers Jeff, Kerouac’s story of the spiritual quest of a group of Californian travellers.
Dharma
is the Sanskrit word for the righteous path through life.
    â€˜After Kerouac died, Ginsberg took Bob Dylan to his graveside because to both men he was a point of origin,’ I say.
    The playwright Sam Shephard witnessed their tombstone seance. ‘This life seems like a miracle. Still ongoing,’ Shephard wrote as he watched Dylan strum his guitar and Ginsberg play a flute, moved by the communion of men who embodied the potent force of the age. ‘Allen and Dylan singing on his grave. Allen, full of life, hope and