Handbook: Hitchhiking

a hitchhiker with a guitar along a long dusty road

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Your mom told you it was dangerous, but you just wouldn’t listen, would you?

So, you stood along some dusty road, somewhere out there, your thumb in the air, and waited.

And waited. Maybe you waited a long time, or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you hopped into a car, a little frightened at first, but then got into some conversation. Or awkward silence. Either way, you got where you were going.

Hitchhiking is a lost art, some say, but plenty of people–men and women alike–are making their way on down the road to wherever they’re headed, meeting new friends, learning to open up a little, and often getting the rarest of things…a free ride…in the process.

Articles About Hitchhiking

Blog Posts About Hitchhiking

The Stinging Nettle in Barcelona

Barcelona, Can Masdeo, occupied building, squat, community, anarchism

Like the stinging nettle, this community germinated without sanction or permission, and provides healing and precious nourishment. It does so for both its dwellers and the surrounding communities, through its vast vegetable gardens that are open to the neighborhood, their convivial social and cultural activities, their full and radical implementation of sustainable practices, and by their sheer example of what the world could be like. And like the stinging nettle, it has had to and will defend itself against uprooting, if necessary.

The Road to Van

Turkey, Kurdistan, travel, hitchhiking, Ararat, mountain, adventure

“There is no work here,” he says. “At school, we learn only Turkish. No Kurdish.” It’s a story we will hear over and over again on this journey, now we’re in the part of Turkey unofficially known as Kurdistan. The Kurdish language was banned by the state until very recently. Town names were changed and Turkifised. Kurdish names were banned for children. It was illegal to speak Kurdish at school, or to print books in the language. It was a very successful campaign, most adults today either do not remember, or never learned the language.