Rick Steves' life-changing memoir recalls his days ‘On the Hippie Trail’

Rick Steves is coming to Minnesota soon but he would prefer that you not wish him, “Safe travels.”

“Bon voyage” is the preferred message for the travel guru, who thinks safety, while good in theory, can be overrated. The PBS host and author, who says his mission is “to inspire and equip Americans to venture beyond Orlando,” advocates making yourself a little uncomfortable when you travel, taking a chance on the unknown or unexplored.

Steves — who is as ebullient in a phone interview as he is on his popular “Rick Steves' Europe” series on PBS — will talk about that at Hopkins Center for the Arts on Monday. He’ll also discuss his new book, “On the Hippie Trail,” a scrapbook/memoir that covers the 1978 Istanbul-Kathmandu trip on which he began to form many of his ideas about travel.

It’s on that trip that Steves, who has become an advocate for the legalization of cannabis, tried pot for the first time. It’s also when Steves, then a 23-year-old piano teacher in Seattle, found his passions shifting.

“I had 50 wonderful students and I loved teaching them and I had a recital hall but I just decided, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ and realized there was more opportunity to inspire more people by teaching travel,” said Steves, who took the trip with friend and collaborator Gene Openshaw.

That process plays out in “Hippie Trail.” Adapted from a journal Steves had set aside for 40 years and rediscovered during the COVID pandemic, it includes plenty of moments of discomfort. Early in the trip, in the midst of illnesses and travel delays, he even wrote, “I’m glad I’m finally doing this but I’m really looking forward to the end of it all.”

“Hippie Trail” also reveals the young Steves' growing awareness that, more than just showing off pretty places (although his detailed description of the Taj Mahal makes you feel like you’ve been there), travel can be an introduction to the way the world works.

“A third of the people on this planet eat with forks and spoons like you, a third of the people eat with chopsticks, and a third of the people eat with their fingers like me … and we’re all civilized just the same,” a man in Kabul tells Steves, who also wrote that he “never cared about or even noticed, what I was now realizing was a big ethical issue: the giant difference between rich people and poor people.”

Lightly edited, “Hippie Trail” reveals Steves being confronted with his privilege, as an American with many more resources than virtually everyone he encountered. But culture shock, insists Steves, is a good thing.

“Twenty-three-year-old me was a piano teacher who was just curious about the world and was inclined to travel with abandon,” said Steves, whose trip included great beauty but also great poverty. “I’m comfortable with Thomas Jefferson’s idea that travel makes a person wiser, if less happy. I don’t just want to be happy. I want to be more engaged with the world.”

That process is in evidence in “Hippie Trail,” which Steves describes as an “anthropological dig” into his own youth: “When I read it now, I see a more unguarded, a more candid, a more uncalculated kind of ‘embrace serendipity/enjoy the moment’ Rick Steves than I am now. I don’t regret who I am now but I sure am thankful that I was who I was back then.”

Ironically, although Steves is on the road about 100 days a year and more than 30,000 people experience his company’s tours annually, he has not explored his own country much. He has been to Minnesota often, for instance, but mostly for work-related trips to Twin Cities Public Television, which airs his show on Saturday afternoons.

Steves won’t see much of Minnesota this time, either, but said he’s eager to spread the word about different kinds of trip-takers — “tourists, travelers and pilgrims” — and trade travel stories with folks who come to see him in Hopkins.

“I like to mix it up. Too many people have never written a poem on the road,” said Steves, who shares his poetry in the new book. “When we travel, it should be a transformational experience. When I come to [Minnesota], I hope to inspire people to travel that way.”

Rick Steves presents: On the Hippie Trail

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 17.

Where: Hopkins Center for the Arts, 1111 Main St., Hopkins.

Tickets: $58.31 (includes a copy of the book), hopkinsartcenter.com.