DROPOUT

A true five-year journey · 1972 to 1976

Before borders hardened,
one young American headed east.

Europe. Turkey. Iran. Afghanistan. Pakistan. India. A vanished world, encountered with little money, no phone and no fixed timetable.

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Author portrait and book presentation from the DROP OUT archive

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Complete cover of DROP OUT by J. Jay Eugene

The decision

“I did not drop out of life. I dropped out of the life already arranged for me.”

J. (JAY) EUGENE, on the title of DROP OUT

A world beyond the roadmap

Five years.
Thousands of miles.
No safety net.

What begins as youthful curiosity becomes an immersion in foreign cultures, unpredictable danger, companionship and intoxicating freedom. Politics forms the weather: Turkey under martial law, the Shah’s Iran, Afghanistan before collapse, and India and Pakistan after war.

Map of the overland route from 1972 to 1976, from Europe through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to India
1972The departure
6regions crossed
5years on the road
1976The return
Black-and-white photograph of runners and bulls in a crowded Pamplona street
Into the street, Pamplona. Historical photograph from the author’s archive.

Inside the experience

The world does not move out of your way.

DROP OUT is not a report from the sidelines. Eugene runs with the bulls, sleeps beside the Blue Mosque, teaches in Tehran, crosses Afghanistan by road and faces a train riot in the desert. Sometimes violently, he learns that open borders never meant a safe world.

“I was going to Europe.”

A line from the memoir. It was the decision that set everything in motion.

What readers are saying

“Having lived through the period, with friends who dropped out for a time, it is a regret in my life. An exhilarating story with refreshing candor.”

Powerful. Highly recommended.

JamesLawyer

“An insight into a time, with the culture, geopolitics, antics and frolics of a young man attacking the world. He gains knowledge few achieve in a lifetime. A must read.”

Stimulating, informative and fully recommended.

KristineAuthor

“I would never have let my boy take this journey, but a man in his twenties would not ask his mother. The activities are variously cruel, heartwarming, exotic, dangerous and enlightening.”

Worth every parent’s and young man’s time.

JanellMother

Twelve months from the road

A year of stories,
ready to share.

Twelve short, memoir-grounded stories, one for each month of a full editorial year. Each is adapted from an episode or relationship in DROP OUT and ready to pair with social outreach.

Visit the DROP OUT blog

The author

J. (JAY) EUGENE

A wandering flâneur drawn to places in transition.

J. (Jay) Eugene is drawn to the margins of society; from teeming cities, to Himalayan trails, to the isolation of North Korea. For more than fifty years, his curiosity in people, cultures, economics, and geopolitics has placed him in regions on the edge of transformation.

Jay has lived in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He spent two decades as an executive building and leading businesses worldwide. Now based in the U.S., he still sets out with his small leather bag each year, and circles the globe in search of places in transition. Travel, it seems, remains his first and most persistent calling.

DROP OUT is drawn from his first five-year overland sojourn across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in the 1970s.

Read the story

A world beginning to close.

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Bookstores can order the paperback using ISBN 9798994999110.

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Cover of DROP OUT by J. Jay Eugene

Road note adapted from an episode described in DROP OUT.

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