Travel guru won’t slow down

EVERETT — Prostate cancer may have slowed down European travel expert Rick Steves temporarily but the 69-year-old is back on the road promoting his new book and will soon travel to Europe to film his PBS television series.

After a routine blood test in August, a doctor diagnosed Steves with prostate cancer, a disease that is estimated to affect one in eight men.

Doctors removed his prostate in October 2024. Physicians that the procedure would give him the best chance for a permanent recovery.

His doctor told him last month that he’s cancer-free.

“It’s taken me a few months to get my energy back,” he said in a phone interview with The Everett Herald last week.

In his latest travels, he is quickly cross-crossing the U.S. in a two-week tour to promote his new book, “On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer.”

“It’s like breathing straight oxygen, where I can share the lessons of my travels,” he said describing the rush he gets when he is on a speaking tour.

The book is based on a six-country tour Steves took in 1978 when he was 23.

If that wasn’t enough, the weekend before his book tour began, Steves appeared twice with the Omaha Symphony in Nebraska, talking about European history while the orchestra played romantic-era anthems.

In several weeks, he’ll be in Istanbul and then Rome, filming new episodes of his PBS television show, “Rick Steve’s Europe.”

Then it’s back on the road again in the U.S. in April to promote his book in Boise and a lecture in Spokane.

This summer, he plans to hike the Italian Alps with his girlfriend.

Steves said he loves running his travel business which also includes a syndicated column that runs Saturday in The Everett Herald, a radio show and audio tours of various areas in Europe.

“I have no plans to retire,’ he said. “I have no interest in a vacation. This revitalizes me.”

During an appearance last week at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Steves discussed much more than his new book with appreciative fans who clapped loudly throughout his talk.

Steves’ “hippie trip” in 1978 was the inspiration for his travel business, but he decided to concentrate on Europe, the continent that has become his bread and butter.

Before his life-changing journey in ‘78, Steves was a piano teacher. He gave that up after the trip and converted his Edmonds musical studio in a lecture hall where he taught how to travel to Europe on the cheap and avoid the tourist crowds.

During the appearance last week, Steves talked about the “brotherhood of travel,” as well as making bonds with people around the world while learning about their culture and struggles. He repeatedly blasted the Trump administration for cutting foreign aid while having an insular view of the world.

“I wish I could take President Trump and his buddy Elon Musk on a little hike around Europe to meet some real people,” he said. “These guys don’t know the world, they have their golf courses everywhere, it’s tragic.”

Steves said people don’t want to see what will happen when foreign aid is cut and resentment builds from people living in poverty.

“Even if you’re motivated only by greed, you don’t want to be filthy rich in a very poor world,” Steves said.

While Steves may not vacation, he sure hopes you do.

“It’s the only thing that makes serious money,” he said of his travel business, which is based in Edmonds and employs 100 people locally.

Though his travel business started with the aim to teach Americans that Europe could be an affordable destination, the guided tours have become much more expensive.

A tour brochure shows that the tours start at around $2,300 for a week tour to Rome, sharing a room with another person, with longer tours to multiple destinations costing more than $5,000. Tours do not include airfare or most meals, except for daily breakfast.

Much of the event in Lake Forest Bank took the audience back to 1978 and Steves’ trip aboard a minibus on the Hippie Trail — a popular travel route at the time for young people.

Steves was on a summer break from his piano teaching business.

Steves, traveling with a good friend, said he had already been to Europe several times and wanted something different — an adventure to new cultures and worlds.

He got high for the first time in Afghanistan, rode an elephant in India, battled leeches in Pakistan and learned new customs from locals.

“I remember being so enthralled by this elephant ride that I pulled my legs up a split second before the elephant crunched into a concrete landing dock,” he told the audience in Lake Forest Park. “Quite shaken up, I realized I came within a moment of losing both my legs in India.”

Another encounter on the trip was his talk with a professor in Afghanistan who ate with his hands, teaching Steves that the western way was not always the right way.

“A third of the people on this planet eat with spoons and forks 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,” he said the professor told him.

Steves said the talk with the professor helped him understand the common humanity that bonds us all.

Steve said the Hippie Trail became nearly impossible to complete the year after his trip. The Iranian Revolution came in 1979 with the Shah of Iran being overthrown, and Russia invaded Afghanistan.

Steves said travelers could still take their own hippie journey to other places, mentioning Cuba, where the U.S. government placed severe restrictions on travel. Most Americans don’t realize that Cuba is the most popular Caribbean destination for Canadians and Germans, he said.

Steves said travel is getting out of your comfort zone and said his role is to show Americans that there is another world to explore beyond Walt Disney World, Las Vegas and Caribbean cruises.

Steves said because of Trump administration policies, it is more important than ever to travel the world and build bridges with people.

“It’s not America first again,” he said. “It’s love our neighbors and if you believe in a god, we are all children of God. That means we’re all brothers and sisters. And when you travel, you get to know the family and the suffering across the sea is just as real and important as the suffering across the street.”

Randy Diamond: 425-339-3097; randy.diamond@heraldnet.com

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