Rick Steves never set out to be a travel guru.
In the late ’70s he had just graduated from university and was starting a career as a piano teacher. He felt the call of the “Hippie Trail” — an overland journey from Istanbul to Kathmandu — and set out with a friend to travel it before getting on with his new life.
But something about the long, cross-border bus rides and nights spent sleeping on the floor, surrounded by amateur poets, philosophers and musicians, sucked him in.
“I was entering into a world where not a single soul knew I existed and I didn’t know a single soul. We had no internet, you know, and we had no safety net. Our parents couldn’t come in and rescue us,” Steves told The Current host Matt Galloway.
He loved the journey so much that not long after, he gave up piano teaching to lead tours, write travel …