https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Tortoise
edit: oh wow. It still runs!
Anchorage to Belize: 5777 miles
London to Kolkata: 5695 miles
> is
I usually find Wikipedia to be quite accurate when it comes to telling whether something is still operational/active or not, especially when it comes to businesses (among other things).
Oof that really puts inflation into perspective doesn’t it?
So it's not just inflation, it's "that used to be cheaper".
I guess on the flipside, travelling by plane in 1957 (or even 1974), would have been much more than £2,589.
Not to mention a lot more dangerous.
> What cost £85.00 in 1957 would cost £1,796.12 in November 2025.
Not orders of magnitude off, but makes a little more sense this way. I wonder if there's a bug in wikipedia's inflation calculator.
[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Inflation/UK/dataset
The past really is a foreign country sometimes.
My grandmother took 2 or 3 of her kids, on her own, on the train from London to southern Italy a couple of times a year with the same kind of stoicism as people take the bus into town these days. They were built different
It is a fond memory now, but looking back on it, A 3-day (most of it in Texas) 2000 mile journey with four children in coach.... The woman was a saint.
Someone found some photos on Shutterstock:
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/london-to-calc...
See here for much better Wikipedia article that keeps the details straight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_b...
London–Calcutta Bus Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40649091 - June 2024 (117 comments)
I guess:
- very motivated to go
- plan to stay for a very long time
- absolutely CANNOT afford a plane ticket
- or, afraid of flying
Reminds me of a lot of Amtrack routes in the US. I looked at trips from NYC to Chicago. I thought it would be fun and I needed to get to Chicago. But it was more expensive than flying and like 25 hours. There is just absolutely no reason to travel that way.
I can't say it would have been very comfortable, so I guess it would be trading time and comfort for money.
Also, with bus travel you could, if you felt like it, leave the trip to enjoy many more local attractions and resume your travels later in a way not afforded by airplane or rail travel.
Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.
But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.
Pros:
- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)
- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar
- Spectacular views
- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports
- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.
Cons:
- 32 hours of travel
- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat
Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.
Some more pros:
- The food served in the dining car is far better than airplane food. If you get a bed, the food is included. Even if you get a seat, you have the option of paying for good food.
- You can bring a bicycle along for the ride. You do not need to disassemble it or put it in a box. Just walk the bike to the luggage car and someone will take it; when you get off the train walk to the luggage car and someone will hand it to you.
It definitely doesn't encourage people to use them instead of flying.
Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.
If it's luck then I'm thankful if nothing else.
Definitely my preferred way to do Vancouver-Seattle travel.
Could have flown Saturday evening and had an extra day in a hotel room in Miami instead, but I spend enough time in chain hotels
If I had 50 days to spare I might choose that over a flight too!
One would think that travelling across so many countries and continents would be quite clearly the point of the bus service.
Some people liked to see all these places and meet people. The journey itself would be an adventure. The other alternative would be by sea.
I used to know someone who travelled to India overland long before the Beatles made it fashionable for westerners to visit.
It was a 6 week vacation, the purpose was to travel and see the US. I enjoyed it very much!
> became famously associated with the overland Hippie Trail of the 1960s and 1970s
When I take Amtrak, it’s because I want to look out of a window for a few dozen hours and see something new (to me) every time I look out the window.
It’s probably the bus trip that they want, and not simply “go to India.”
And specifically on this, clashing with a very exotic cultures and mindsets along the way, forming unexpected intense interactions and experiences that you will remember for the rest of your life.
I've done a similar thing to this since this specifically wasn't possible anymore without crossing battlefields and risking kidnapping and death - backpacking around India for 6 months together. No real destination or plan, just 1 thick Lonely planet book covering whole country in the backpack (this was 2008 and 2010), return ticket and fixed budget in cash.
Came back a bit different, dare I say in some ways enlightened person. Experience cannot be explained to others by mere words, but other folks who experienced similar understand without a word.
Fits the hippie age quite well.
The equivalent of this would be interrailing through europe... travel via train to one country, stay for a few days, travel to next, stay a few days, and continue, all with a single ticket: https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/global-pass
Creating a protocol that would solve it.
Check this profile for the email if you wanna ask for more info or get updates.
[1] https://xcancel.com/Indianmemory/status/1277521026813882368#...
Last year I took buses from Lima to Rio de Janeiro (not one bus, but a long trip, all by bus). In total, 3,800 miles. I've been meaning to maybe write blog post with the details (exact costs and times, etc).
For me, trains are much preferable to buses and buses much, much preferable to flying. I guess I just like to look about the window and see everything between points A and B.
Related, the Damascus <-> Baghdad bus from the 1930s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmpfHuLo14
It's a Calum documentary. He does these in-depth studies of historical curiosities like snow trains and WW2 rescue buoys. One of my favorite channels.
Some historian say this might have actually caused the 1st world war since these German activities provoked the British empire.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Baghdad_railway
Quite an iconic route that became much simpler administratively to travel in 2000s but perhaps again trickier now because of the situation with Russia.
https://www.oasisoverland.co.uk/trips/cape-town-to-cairo-23-...
https://compassexpeditions.com/special-tours/major-expeditio...
Can see it having been a unique experience, bonding with people over such a long period of time.
Looks like photos from inside the bus are also not available sadly.
Oh, so your friend is the reason the extremely generous £391/mo unemployment benefit stops if you leave the country even for one day now ! :)
Or to put it another way. There were only a handful of such buses running simultaneously. So there were only a few hundred passengers per year. Is it hard to imagine that in the 3ish Billion people that live on that route today, you couldn't find 500 people who can take a few months off to do an epic journey through 20 countries?
Indeed, the Wikipedia article is written in a way that strongly implies that there was in fact just a single bus, unless there were other companies running the same service.
Dragoman is one, still running.
(But, seriously, you can probably do it in another 48 hours...)
Source: me and my wife traveled extensively by public transport in, well, at least Pakistan. The other countries are indeed sort-of hairy, but mostly for job-clearance-related reasons.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balochistan_Liberation_Army
https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1066_and_h600_bestv2/l5n4h4gmRtj...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bus
"Cyclops has a passenger capacity of 110 and is equipped with a bowling alley, Asian-style cocktail lounge with a piano bar, swimming pool, Bicentennial dining room, private marble-and-gold bathroom with sunken tub, and chef's kitchen."
Ah, so there is a chance!
https://i2-prod.dailyrecord.co.uk/article1124887.ece/ALTERNA...
Meanwhile, my life expectancy is, like at least twice that 'prior to WW1' and my disposable income at least 20 times my take-home pay in 1917.
Bloody EU, innit...
Based on my experience on L.A.'s "Pacific Surfliner", I'm pretty sure American train speeds have been on the decline since 1926.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1q841...
Was the Reddit article the impetus for your post?
