10 women travelers who broke all the rules

Uschi Obermaier

Growing up in suburban Munich, Uschi Obermaier admits that “I used to wish for a plane crash, just for a bit of action.” She definitely got the plane part, and the action, but fortunately no crash was required. When she started frequenting a popular rock club called the Big Apple, Obermaier was discovered as a model and began to meet influential celebrities and photographers.

By the late 1960s Obermaier made her way to West Berlin and joined an intentional community of activists called Kommune 1. Her stint in the Maoist collective helped cement her association with glamorous free love and drug use, but the movement came to a screeching halt after a student demonstrator was shot by police in 1969.

Obermaier moved on from political associations and instead dated rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger, going on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1975. Eventually she spent six years traveling the world with club owner Dieter Bockhorn, living the OG van life in a tricked-out custom bus they used to follow the Hippie Trail across Asia and eventually to Mexico. They married in India, and remained together until Bockhorn’s sudden death in a motorcycle accident in 1983. 

Today Obermaier has retired from heroin, joints, and rock ‘n’ roll hookups, living a quiet life as a jewelry designer in Topanga Canyon. But her fame has endured thanks to a German biography, High Times, and a biopic film adaptation, Eight Miles High that celebrate Obermaier’s one-of-a-kind life.