This picture brings back memories from… is it really thirty five years ago?   But the faded image doesn’t do Rudi justice.  His compact body is muscular, as I remember it, yet seems shorter, and the black and white photo can’t show his beautiful eyes.  Were they really violet?  And was I really so reckless?

 It all started in the famous Pudding Shop in Istanbul, known on the underground as the place for hippies to hang out and pick up lifts.  I’d heard about the large bulletin board offering rides east or west on the Hippy Trail and was heading for Australia, determined to travel far and fast to escape a broken heart.
I had arrived in Istanbul by Magic Bus from Amsterdam, found a cheap hotel and written to my mother: 
        The hotel is right across the road from the Blue Mosque, within hearing distance of the minarets and right near the Pudding Shop, for about 4/6d a night!  The room has a bed but nothing else and taps in the loo but no running water so I have to run down three flights for a bucket of water in the morning. Turkish women don’t seem to stay in hotels and there are no facilities for them – double beds are unheard of.
Inside the Pudding Shop, the smoky air was heavy with the scent of patchouli and hashish.  Stoned hippies lounge about, talking intently round  humbly bubblies.  Some have bowls of rose flavoured sutlac, the best way to satisfy the munchies. 
Most of the Turkish food is ultra sweet.  You would love the really sticky little pudding cum cake affairs, floating in liquid honey…
I glimpse thin Persian cats creeping cautiously between the tables, wary of the waiter’s sly kicks as I scan the cards on the crowded notice board. Aware of eyes resting on my hennaed hair and new rucksack, I try to ignore  comments from the tables behind me.
‘We can give you a good ride,’ an Australian voice leers over manic giggles. 
I don’t reply, conscious that a single woman traveller excites interest and that definitely wasn’t what I wanted.  I was still feeling emotionally fragile and only a few days away from the man I loved, yet had left.  Now I just wanted to keep moving and forget the past.
One card is exactly what I’m looking for:
Free ride Istanbul – Kabul.  Find Rudi at the yellow Mercedes. 
I look across Divan Yolu Street, a noisy chaos of buses, taxis - mostly horse-drawn hansom cabs  - donkeys and street vendors, and see a big yellow Mercedes van parked on waste ground.  I weave through the traffic, sidestep beggars and hustlers, brushing off impudent hands to finally reach the van.  It is empty, locked.  I walk round it, knock on the door, peer in the windows.  Walk round it again, disappointed and unsure whether to wait or return to my hotel.  Now I am surrounded by a small, persistent throng of boys and beggars trying to sell me snacks and souvenirs or dare each other into a quick grope of the foreign woman.  I fluster my way back across the busy street, relieved to enter the Pudding Shop and leave the embarrassing little crowd behind.
 Deciding to write my name and hotel on a slip of paper, I sit and start to rummage through the layers in my rucksack.  Immediately the waiter arrives,
   ‘Sutlac, kebab, coffee, tea, hashish?’
I look up to see him being hustled aside by an older, straight-looking man with short dark hair and heart-stopping deep violet eyes.
        ‘I’m Rudi; you want a lift to Kabul?’
My thoughts panic. 
Yes, I do want a lift, but no, he’s too handsome, but why is my  heart fluttering and a flush colouring my face?
        Over tea Rudi makes a deal with me. (Tea is drunk without milk but plenty of sugar in tiny sherry-size glasses and cost about 2d.)   My role is to keep Rudi awake and supplied with coffee as he drives non-stop to Kabul.  He plans to fill the van with Afghan rugs and make a big profit  selling them in Austria.  We will leave early next morning on the 2000 mile journey across Turkey, Iran and most of Afghanistan. 
‘It should take five days,’ Rudi states.

I take this new role seriously; my life is now in a stranger’s hands. Driving in Turkey is notoriously dangerous and, so far, rules of the road seem non-existent. My little rucksack bounces around in the back of the big empty van as we set off just after sunrise.  However, my confidence in Rudi’s ability grows when I see that he is a fast but skilled and courteous driver,  hurling the big van through Istanbul’s early morning traffic and out onto the dusty country roads. 
The road stopped being tarmac and went up and down the mountains on hairpin bends – with the backside of the van crunching round left hand turns and the front grinding into right hand bends. 
I talk but find myself listening more.  Rudi has outgrown the hippy scene which he now despises and his new plans involve becoming mega rich.  I find it harder to accept his claim that he is a wizard fighting cosmic evil forces that make contact with him through television sets.  I’m confused but at the same attracted by his charisma.  I tell Rudi about my life before I turned on, tuned in and dropped out. About the unfaithful husband I had left in Amsterdam.   
By the time I wrote to Vic I was already becoming a different person:
I think fondly of your mellow gentleness and wonder sometimes why on earth I left.   Only to know there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be than here and now.  Things fall away travelling. 
       Telling my story was therapy – it made me realise what a mess my life had become.  I was halfway through a college course when I knew I couldn’t hack it. I had a husband I couldn’t live with and didn’t want to live without. So I had decided to escape, find myself by travelling east then maybe start a new life in Australia. 
 Rudi quoted Rilke and  taught me the basic concept of Buddhism – Be Here Now -  to  background tapes of The Doors and Cream as the big yellow van rattled east day and night. The glorious scenery, empty roads and constant motion had a calming effect:
Some of the hills in western Turkey have patches of acid blue and green rocks and at sunset, when the rest of the hills were pink and purple, the colours were unbelievable.  Some are rocky and jagged while others are rounded like piles of sifted flour.  And all very desolate, not a blade of green.
    We stopped at roadside cafes for food and diesel. Every new experience enchanted me.
 Unleavened bread as thin as paper folded up like a map, each person got about two square feet.  You could almost wear it if you were hard up!
One evening, in an Iranian diner full of pillars and deceptive mirrors, where wild-looking tribesmen whispered revolution, Rudi taught me the magic way to become invisible.  It was to prove invaluable later when I travelled on alone.
I hung on my mentor’s every word, forgetting my receding troubles.  Rudi  explained in great detail how he intended to defeat global evil by setting up his own church in Austria.  He was convinced that he could inspire a mass following and spoke admiringly of Hitler’s charisma. I was to be his first disciple.  There was no doubt that Rudi had a powerful attraction.  I was falling in love with this strange man and  annoyed that everyone else seemed to find him irresistible too.  In the bazaar at Mashad he was stalked by a man whispering in his ear, ‘You are so handsome.’  (I was invisible.)
The men often hold hands when walking in the street, even the police! And usually when they are talking.
Turning calmly, Rudi commanded the youth to leave everything and follow him, naked, since he had found the new messiah.
‘What, sexy! And everyone can see my factory?’ was the embarrassed reply.

Two weeks, or a lifetime, later I write home from Kabul:
It’s so far out to think it is only 17 days from you yet a thousand light years from the cold and damp. I got a ride from Istanbul to Kabul (11days) with a very beautiful Austrian free trader in a Mercedes van.  He has been ten times to India and people greet him everywhere like an old friend.  Absolutely no hassles and he made it so easy.  I must confess I shed a tear on parting because travelling throws people unnaturally close together.  Such sweet sadness!  He gave me a gold and lapis lazuli bracelet and his photo.
Before we parted in Kabul, I asked Rudi why he chose me as his travelling companion.  He confessed that he had been sitting in the Pudding Shop all the time, watching people as they read his notice and searched for him. He selected me because I was wandering about like a headless chicken and looked like I needed a chaperone.

Rudi was right; travelling with him taught me a lot and changed my life for the better.  I never did join his church, but I still have the bangle, the memories and a beautiful Afghan rug.