“Overland Tales: Adventures On The Way To India”

Huyler In Rajasthan, 1971

“Overland Tales: Adventures On The Way To India” May 30

Huyler in Kabul, 1971

Photographer, author, and anthropologist Steve Huyler will give an illustrated talk, “Overland Tales: A Nineteen Year Old’s Adventures On The Way To India in 1971” at the Camden Public Library on Thursday, May 30, at 7:00 pm. “I would like to tell a story about how I first traveled to India overland from Paris in 1971,” says Huyler. “I was just 19 years old, and traveled entirely alone by local transportation all 7000 miles. As you may imagine, I was very naive and had many rather remarkable adventures. For example: I took a barely reconstructed wreck of a bus over Mount Ararat’s Pass between Turkey and Iran, narrowly escaping death. I shared a seat with a veiled Irani widow who jabbed me painfully and spat on me while the bus of Iranian men burst into laughter. My seat mate on another bus across eastern Iran was a golden-fleeced goat. I blew giant bubbles for an assembled crowd in the center square of Kabul. (I loved Afghanistan.) I crossed over the border from Pakistan into India just weeks before war broke out between both countries. Only one very rural check-point was still open, miles from any towns or cities. Reaching there I passed hundreds of tanks and missile launchers covered with camouflage. Walking into India, my only choice of transportation the 12 kilometers into the nearest town was by bicycle rickshaw. I was so embarrassed at the thought of that small spindly-legged middle-aged man straining himself to cycle me that long distance that I insisted that he ride on the seat while I powered the rickshaw. Thus on my 20th birthday, I first entered India. And so it continued . . . ”

Stephen Huyler, a resident of Camden for the past 29 years, is a well-known author of six books about India, his chosen vocation. Dr. Huyler is a cultural anthropologist who has spent an average of four months every year in India since he first arrived there in 1971. An accomplished photographer, Huyler often gives slide presentations about India. Here at the Camden Library, he is for the first time telling his personal stories of how he was drawn to travel to India at age nineteen and his amazing adventures getting there by himself, using local transportation