The Hippie Trail skirted almost all socialist countries - it was not easy to get there and you could not travel freely. For a foreign tourist at the time, a trip to the USSR looked much like a modern tour to North Korea: quite expensive and with zero freedom of movement. It was much easier to enter Yugoslavia - it was not part of the Eastern Bloc. Some travelers made their way through Bulgaria, though they tried to avoid it too, preferring Greece: at the time, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was notorious for paranoia and police brutality - every foreigner was seen as a Western spy, travelers were often detained and searched.

Istanbul, for obvious reasons, could not be avoided. Here all travelers' routes crossed and the classical part of the Hippie Trail began, which passed through six countries: Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. While most people went straight from Turkey to Iran, some went south and detoured into Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Some travelers even went as far as Egypt.

Today's Iran is an Islamic state with strict laws, but during the heyday of the Hippie Trail the country was ruled by a secular, pro-Western shah. However, the Iranians themselves were quite religious people, and the state regime was also quite strict, so many travelers preferred to pass Iran as soon as possible: they stopped in Tehran to rest and get visas, and then, skipping all the sights, hurried to Mashhad and further to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan at that time was also a very different country from what it is now. Even despite the conservatism of the locals, it amazed by its freedom. Especially when it comes to drugs.
Whereas in Turkey and Iran drugs were under strict prohibition, in Afghanistan a significant part of the population used hashish itself. From there and further east, hashish was absolutely accessible, and for a certain stratum of tourists it was the purpose and main attraction of the trip.