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stranger’s spontaneity shakes me. ‘You asked me about the shit,’ she says, a needy tremble again in her voice. ‘There have been… changes at home.’
    â€˜Changes?’ I ask. She holds my gaze and a shiver runs up my spine. I imagine a flash of fireworks once more. Suddenly I want to know more about her.
    â€˜I’ll tell you on the bus.’
    â€˜What bus?’
    â€˜I’ll also tell you about Kesey.’
    â€˜Ken Kesey?’ I say, my voice rising an octave. Kesey was one of the dominant personalities of the hippie era. In 1964, he travelled across America in a converted school bus, staging the Acid Test dances, blowing his and the nation’s minds. His journey was another of the cultural precedents for the Asian trail. ‘You knew Kesey?’
    â€˜I crossed the States on his magic bus.’
    With Neal Cassady at the wheel, on whom Kerouac – bebop Whitman, lonesome traveller – based the central character in
On the Road
.
    â€˜Jack,’ says Penny, ‘I fancy your company.’
    I know that the best way to discover a city is to walk it, to stop for a moment, to gaze and to listen. But I did unexpected Istanbul at a run, immersing myself in Friday prayers with Adem Çolpanand the Intrepid’s favourite
hamam
, taking in both the sacred tomb of Mohammed’s standard-bearer and the venue of Petula Clark’s 1966 concert, discussing political disaffection in Kalkan’s garden and wrapping up the capital of three empires in four days. While I worked, Penny hung out at our hotel, making me humus and chive sandwiches, reading her tarot cards. She also repacked our bags.
    â€˜They’re overweight with expectation,’ she told me, ‘that is, illusion.’
    Not long after dawn on our last morning, we walked through Beyo ğ lu’s leafy courtyards, smelling washed cobblestones and apple tea, sharing the city with market cats and street-sweepers. Outside the Institut Français, policemen dozed in their patrol car, glasses of
çay
cooling on the roof. A spent clubber slept beneath an exhausted cash machine. Dirt-poor peasant traders from central Anatolia unpacked their meagre sacks of garden vegetables on the pavement of Taksim Square. We checked in at the Metro Express city terminal. Our bus left on time.
    On a sunny Thursday morning a few months after our departure, a white van hurried by the Grand Hôtel de Londres, where we had stayed, and crashed through the wrought-iron gates of the nearby British Consulate. The explosion killed twenty-seven, including the consul general and the suicide bomber. Fatih, our deferential hotel manager, ran on to the street screaming as a cloud of yellow smoke blocked out the sun.

5. Feeling Groovy
    Spirals of dust trailed away from Istanbul, kicked up not by nomadic traders’ caravans but by Hog Farm commune coaches. Ancient Austins and retired Royal Mail vans staggered on to the Silk Road. Born-again hearses were spurred east by seekers in sandals. Mountain freaks leapt towards Himalaya in rainbow-coloured Jeeps. Banners fluttered from rear windows. Pop music tumbled out of open doors. Overlanders called Blossom and Wombat piloted three-ton Bedford lorries through one-mule hamlets. Aboard clapped-out Turkish coaches and converted Top Deck Routemasters, the Intrepids lit sticks of incense and settled back on Habitat cushions, riding in the weirdest procession of unroadworthy vehicles ever to rattle and rock across the face of the earth.
    â€˜Whooee, here we go.’
    Penny, one of the hundreds of thousands who made the singular journey, is leaning across me, staring out of our bus’s tinted windows, down over the side of the new Bosphorus Bridge at the sparkling water. Behind us is Europe. Ahead a road sign reads, ‘Welcome to Asia.’
    â€˜First time our ferry hit the shore, I yelled, “Outasight. We’re going to Kathmandu!”’
    The morning sun, already