The expedition's afterlives: echoes of empire in travel to Asia

The Hippie Trail was an extremely complex social and cultural formation, which is yet to attract the range of critical scholarship it deserves. Although its origins in the 1960s counter culture have been established, there has been scant recognition of the ways in which the colonial histories and neo-imperial contexts of the Middle East and South Asia also shaped the routes and cultures of the Hippie Trail. The modes of imperial exploration and colonial travel along with Britons cultures, assumptions, and mores were propagated through other cultural products, and their influence extended beyond Britain. The colonial experience at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi is barely concealed. A crude form of imperial nostalgia makes the link between contemporary mass tourism and colonialism distinct. Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition (OCFEE) was pioneering a path through nations and regions affected by colonialism, decolonisation, and the desire for neo-colonial dominance on the part of the postwar superpowers.