> Now more than forty years later, an India-based travel operator Adventures Overland announced a bus service from New Delhi to London and back, covering 20,000 km and travelling through 18 countries in 70 days. The service was supposed to start in 2021, but got delayed, probably due to the Covid pandemic. The first bus is expected to leave in April next year.
I wondered what route they were planning, because Iran is still pretty unwelcoming to Brits (funny how overthrowing their government will do that to you), and turns out the plan was to head East through Burma and then Northwest through China and eventually Russia. Obviously there are a couple of problems with that now.
Yeah. We did the Delhi - Tehran part of that route back in 1975. A while back I was playing with Google and trying to see if I could find any route that would be sane to take. Some of the roads are missing so it wasn't possible to map, but it certainly looked like there was no path that didn't contain a piece of NOPE.
Likewise, Johannesburg - London. Did it up to Nigeria, had to bail because of time. Again, looking at a modern map it was even worse than the Asia route.
I wanted to do central europe to India overland ~20 years ago, even got Iranian visa, but Pakistani embassy was doing me problems, so in the end just flew from Turkey to India
getting from Prague/Bratislava to Istanbul is like 1 transfer in Sofia (still works in 2026, there is Flixbus from Bratislava to Sofia for like 50EUR for 17 hours ride)
similar with trans-siberian railway, back in the days you hopped on train from Budapest to Moscow, switched for trans-siberian/manchuarian railway and you could be with 1 transfer from Budapest in Vladivostok/Beijing
The world seems to have become smaller since then. Many places on that route are at war, unstable, unfriendly. Where there would have been curiosity and friendliness there's hostility now.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 28.9 ms ] thread> Now more than forty years later, an India-based travel operator Adventures Overland announced a bus service from New Delhi to London and back, covering 20,000 km and travelling through 18 countries in 70 days. The service was supposed to start in 2021, but got delayed, probably due to the Covid pandemic. The first bus is expected to leave in April next year.
I wondered what route they were planning, because Iran is still pretty unwelcoming to Brits (funny how overthrowing their government will do that to you), and turns out the plan was to head East through Burma and then Northwest through China and eventually Russia. Obviously there are a couple of problems with that now.
Likewise, Johannesburg - London. Did it up to Nigeria, had to bail because of time. Again, looking at a modern map it was even worse than the Asia route.
Really good tires, battery and passenger butts to endure such a long journey in the bus :)
> The journey took fifty days...
...so not for the working folks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%E2%80%93Calcutta_bus_se...
https://www.thelongestwayhome.com/resources/overland/my-over...
I wanted to do central europe to India overland ~20 years ago, even got Iranian visa, but Pakistani embassy was doing me problems, so in the end just flew from Turkey to India
getting from Prague/Bratislava to Istanbul is like 1 transfer in Sofia (still works in 2026, there is Flixbus from Bratislava to Sofia for like 50EUR for 17 hours ride)
similar with trans-siberian railway, back in the days you hopped on train from Budapest to Moscow, switched for trans-siberian/manchuarian railway and you could be with 1 transfer from Budapest in Vladivostok/Beijing
Did this... really have to be pointed out? :)