Page 47 - Winter 2021

Courtesy Michael Pierce
Pierce and the others in the documentary film crew traveled in a bus through remote areas of Europe and Asia in 1982.
Documentarian
Just as Pierce was contemplating his return to America, one of his friends, George Eich, invited him to a new adventure.
Over the next six months, Eich, Pierce and other friends prepared for a long trip documenting Indian culture. With the help of sponsors like Doctors Without Borders, a German broadcast network and a bus company, the documentary team traveled over 10,000 miles in a single month.
His group trudged along the Alpine roads, through Austria and what was then Yugoslavia before crossing the Soviet Union’s “Iron Curtain.”
Once they were approaching Iran, Pierce had a decision to make since he could not obtain an Iranian visa. (It was 1982, only about one year since the Iran hostage crisis ended.) Would he fly back to Munich and end his journey, or would he begin a new journey?
With $50 to his name, Pierce chose to go to Karachi, Pakistan, to visit an old friend, Shamsudeen Ahmed, whom he had met at a Sufi commune in California in 1980.
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WINTER 2021 | OCONEE THE MAGAZINE | PAGE 45