Shanti Bloody Shanti: An Indian Odyssey

A drug dealer's contract on his life forces Australian ex-punk rocker, playwright, actor, and journalist Smith to do the sketchy bail (Australian for "leave in a hurry") to India. Thus begins a romp along the hippie trail of the new millennium. Along the way, the author meets an international cast of characters who wander like a tribe, parting and reuniting at all the well-known spiritual watering holes along the trail. Drugs are cheap; the travelers lodge in fleabag hotels and endure bouts of diarrhea. Contact with locals is minimal. But face to face with poverty, Smith observes, "How frivolous and conceited of me to come here from my more affluent but spiritually effluent culture on my little spiritual safari." Then in the Himalayas—at the glacier that's the source of the Ganges—the stoner's picnic swiftly turns into tragedy.