London–Calcutta Bus Service | Hacker News Reader

London–Calcutta Bus Service

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203 pointsDeathArrow117 comments

My aunt and uncle took their honeymoon in 1967 by driving from Adelaide to London, where they lived for a few years and then drove home. While a crazy trip, quite a few people did this, including my mother's best friend for her honeymoon.

When we visited, we flew. I don't remember how long it took, but by the late 70s, with 747s, the flight had shortened down to 36 hours.

They drove from Adelaide? Any idea how they got across the wet bits?

You take ferries/ships as needed on such trips, usually with the intent to use them for as little of the trip as reasonable.

Were there international car ferries to/from Australia? I’m not aware of any currently.

Yes, passenger ships and ferries were more common than today. When my mum went to Australia for school in the 1950s she went by ship.

This sounds like a "back in my day I had to take a ship to school" bit

Ships were obviously much more common given there’s basically one trans-Atlantic ocean liner these days.

Yeah a lot of it was killed by cheap flights.

And even before flights got generally cheaper, it's hard for most people to justify taking almost a week longer, between a very limited number of destinations, on a pretty limited schedule.

Even in 60s when big himalayan expeditions were done, people travelled by big boats starting usually in India, for a month or two. Then got half of their equipment lost (so this part didn't change that much).

As an addition to the other responses about the historical side you can currently still ship your car in/out of Australia today you'll just have to do it as cargo instead of a single passenger ferry which also carries your car too. I know a guy that did that with his car to Europe for ~8 months, just make sure you plan well in advanced or you'll be waiting 2-3 months on that leg :).

There used to be far more (sometimes ocean-going) RORO ferries than there are now, Herald of Free Enterprise and Estonia really reduced the market to areas where the ferries are pretty much essential.

I'd love to see photos! Ideally including the bus :)

Isn’t it a bit sad to think that trips like these are pretty much impossible to make these days? The number of countries I would consider safe to live in and raise my children in is much lower today than it was in the seventies. On that metric, things have only gone in the wrong direction for the duration of my life.

Kids in my highschool used to routinely load up a VW camper van and go surfing in Baja and camping on the beach, without cellphones and without contact most of the trip. No way I'd let my kids do that today.

Side note it's crazy that today a camper van is unaffordable to the rich yet alone a budget highschool vehicle and Pacifico commercials are on TV. The future is weird.

>without cellphones and without contact most of the trip

Well, that's a big difference. Even traveling 25 years ago it was pretty accepted that, even if I were traveling with a company, I was pretty much not reachable. Among other things, I did a 10 day sea kayaking trip with a company and we'd have been totally out of communication if something had happened. I think they had VHF but it would have been--maybe if there's a ship on line of sight we could possibly reach them.

Today, I think a lot of people would have a problem with the idea that I might be incommunicado for weeks or months.

You are the one who is setting the boundaries and rules for your own life. Not being reachable for weeks or months is totally fine if that's what someone wants.

Of course. I just think it's probably also true that the expectations of what is customary and "normal" have also changed.

I grew up in a boarding school—-the only checkin was them sending me a letter and me writing back.

By the time a round trip completed—-a broken bone would have completely healed and plaster removed.

Yes, aged 8 went to boarding school. There was no phone for the kids. They did have phones for staff, obviously. In our case they’d call a parent if you broke something. But, communication was a weekly letter. We had letter writing every Sunday morning.

My parents seldom wrote back. My mother would send the occasional post-card, at which point the whole school would comment on how bad her english was.

I got a letter from my father and it was signed off:

“Love Dad

Actually, this is his secretary, but he told me to write love dad on it”

After a while there was a campaign to put phones in boarding schools, so a phone was installed. A single phone for 250 boys. There was always a queue and time was limited. On the plus side, I memorized a lot of phone numbers that I’d never know today.

Event with the phone new joiners to the school were banned from using it for the first 3 weeks on the basis they’d adapt quicker to just break the tie to parents than spend all their time moping on the phone.

What a strange interjection from the secretary! Funny and poignant, with an undercurrent of exasperation?

Yes, I does strike me as someone only someone very undertrained would put in. I found it funny at the time, aged 10 or so. It wasn't bad.

I'd rather have letters from him than not, even with odd secretarial additions.

25 years ago I was in high school and pretty much everyone had an inexpensive cellphone. Where did you live where it's so unreachable?

And EPIRBs have been around for more than 50 years.

When I travelled internationally in the 1990s—so maybe 30 years—I was pretty much unreachable. I’ve never had an EPIRB. And didn’t really have a routinely connected cellphone until probably 25 years ago or so when I got a Treo.

I had a cellphone earlier but it was something I used rarely.

Bought my first MacBook almost 20 years ago now and been almost permanently online since then (for better or worse).

Connectivity existed, esp outbound. Of course it wasn't as ubiquitous and cheap as now, but it was there. Heck Starlink is cheaper than my home fiber.

Laptop connectivity was still pretty awful in the 1990s and even early 2000s. Conference WiFi was something of a joke. You were still often still using Dial-up. It’s probably in the last 20 years or so that cell and WiFi have become pretty much a utility in most cases. Which is a while but I remember when they weren’t.

Along the way, viral often tragic stories made the pessimist out of most of us.

A pity you wouldn't let your kids do that. There are still kids today with no cellphone doing their things, and being just fine.

TBH I don't think I'd be cooling with them taking a trip on their own driving through Mexico even with cell phones.

A bunch of kids tragically died last month in baja doing this trip but with cell phones. Mexico is not the same as back in the 70s whatever some boneheaded people on this form may say about risks.

Safe to say i wouldn't send me kids to mexico on a surf trip without a cell phone.

>A bunch of kids tragically died last month in baja doing this trip but with cell phones. Mexico is not the same as back in the 70s whatever some boneheaded people on this form may say about risks.

Didn't kids also die in Mexico in 70s? You just didn't hear about it this much.

A lot of countries has converged to median values, and the median is the one you won't consider safe for yourself and your children.

Another difference is perhaps that back then, population of most countries will consider a European as an ET or nobility, and will not question their ways. If these do something weird, they'll look the other way because obviously.

Now, they don't perceive the difference between themselves and the First World that much, and therefore will bother occassional tourists with upholding the customs of the land.

This bus used to go through countries like Afghanistan that were definitely below the median back then too

It's not the world that's changed, it's you. Objectively that kind of trip is a lot safer today than in those days (although the specifics may differ; Afghanistan and Iran are doubtless more dangerous for a westerner today than in the seventies, but Eastern Europe and a lot of SEA are now safer).

Yeah. I’d be very cautious about the Middle East and some other specific locations including a lot of Africa. But I’d have very few concerns about Eastern Europe with obvious exceptions.

Can't stress this enough, as someone who has traveled to a lot of countries in South/South East Asia the quality of life have improved tremendously

Yes generally thats true, but you just mentioned a massive bottleneck that all the folks doing some variant of silk road (Europe to say India) are facing - Iran and Pakistan.

I've visited Iran in cca 2017 for mostly hiking up highest active volcano in euroasia (Mont Damavand) and spent some remaining days in places like Isfahan and Yazd, and it was one of best travelling experiences ever. People unspoiled by mass tourism are a very rare experience these days, very friendly folks, everybody spoke english very well and seemed highly educated, you have ancient history all around you. These days, I wouldn't go there (to not be used in some political chess game, common people didn't change obviously).

Pakistan is more free, but more dangerous too and as a tourist you stick out massively.

There are other changes for the worse - most of Africa is massively more dangerous than say in 50s and 60s. There were famous folks who rode some basic old cars from say Egypt to South Africa and had just great mostly positive adventures, these days such a trip would be pretty much suicidal as per their own accords.

Many places are safer, some are now crazy or even impossible. And the bad places block every long route I'm aware of having previously existed.

Bah I wouldn't be surprised it is actually safer today. Problem is today there are far, far more rules and regulations.

I actually think things are much safer nowadays with cell phones and satellite communicators, and the wealth of information on the internet about what parts of certain countries are safe. You can even message random people who actually live there on social media about the situation on the ground. Many are happy to reply.

Up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine it was fairly straightforward to do a train journey from London to Singapore. Other than Russia and Belarus the entire rest of the route (London-Paris-Frankfurt-Warsaw and Ulaanbaatar-Beijing-Nanning-Hanoi-HCMC-Siem Reap-Bangkok-Penang-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore) is extremely safe in terms of violent crime.

Warsaw-Moscow-Ulaanbaatar was also safe for tourists prior to the Russian invasion.

(Nitpick: The -Siem Reap- segment would have to be a bus due to the lack of functional rail in Cambodia. However, China is building rail across Laos to connect China and Thailand by rail)

Getting from London to India over land is a little more involved. The European rail network will get you to Turkey comfortably and safely with very little effort (-Frankfurt-Munich-Budapest-Bucharest-Istanbul all have regular trains), and Istanbul-Tehran(Iran) rail service also exists, but heading further east will send you into some unsafe areas very quickly. In the absence of the Russian situation you could do -Warsaw-Moscow-Astana(Kazakhstan)-Almaty-Wulumuqi(China)-Kashi and then as long as it's summer/fall you can take a bus from Kashi to Gilgit(Pakistan), then another bus to Islamabad, and then you can take trains from Islamabad-Lahore-Delhi(India), which travel through some sketchy areas but also isn't a war zone and you'll probably be just fine on the train. Once you're in India you once again have all the rail you want, you can continue to the far south of the Indian subcontinent by train.

I will agree that most of that is acceptable if you stay on the train. Lots of spots I wouldn't want to get off the train, though!

And what good will your satellite communicator be? They're a very good safety precaution when you're heading away from civilization, but this isn't an issue of danger due to remoteness, but danger from the people and politics along the road. Not to mention that your inReach is illegal in China.

> people and politics

Different issues here. It might not help you against politics, but it may help you in "lawless" type situations where cell networks get taken down by gorillas (e.g. if you were on the ground in Ukraine during the invasion)

As for China, it's probably technically illegal, but in China intention matters a lot in law enforcement. If you're doing a cross-continental trip and just passing through China and have it off during that time they are unlikely to actually care. The 4G/5G coverage in China is excellent anyway and violent crime is rare.

Yeah, as a tourist I wouldn't expect too much of an issue. I've seen it multiple times that I get something of a pass on security measures. I've been routed around metal detectors more than once, almost never asked to take a swig from my water bottle etc. So long as I wasn't in a sensitive area I wouldn't worry much about it. (Although the part of China I would be most interested into going into the sort of location where I would be carrying my inReach is Tibet.)

China concerns me for political reasons, not for personal safety ones.

Honestly race is very relevant here. It might have become less safe for a white man over that time period but it’s orders of magnitudes safer for people of other ethnicities than it used to be. I’ve been to more than 70 countries and for the vast, vast majority of those visits, the people have been overwhelmingly welcoming.

I had this discussion (specifically about the Hippie trail) with a friend before I made a trip to Hong Kong in 2019. The conclusion was it is important to travel while you can. Things can change and not always for the better. I returned from Hong Kong on June 3, and less than a week later the protests started and turned violent. Then the next year, global travel all but shut down. I also had the opportunity to visit Kyiv in 2019 and regret not taking it.

I can relate to this. In 2017 I was traveling around Europe and planned to go to Chernobyl because a friend of mine really wanted to visit there. We ended up our trip short in Moscow, unfortunately, because Kyiv was hosting the UEFA Champions League Final and it was impossible to find any hotel room for less than the equivalent of $1000 USD/night. We had already arranged tours and everything. We considered finding accommodation when we got there, but then two days before we reached there, we still haven't had anything and we decided to cut our trip short. I really regret it! I hope I can go to Kyiv soon.

Why would they be impossible?

Plenty of people do similar trips every year. I know two people who cycled from London to Sydney several years ago. There's also the Mongol Rally and similar fun adventures that people do.

Today you might not go through Afghanistan just like in the 70s you would not go through Vietnam.

I am also surprised you consider countries less safe today than in the 70s. The 70s were rife with terrorism and war throughout the world and poverty was orders of magnitudes higher in the vast majority of the countries than it is now.

Maybe you have just become more cautious?

I think the difference is you would have a lot of normal people traveling in the same roads, which does make it safer. Today you would be much more isolated as a traveling going through those roads.

It's not impossible - I did India to Europe overland a while ago. The problem is Iran. They make it awful hard to get a transit visa like insisting on holding your passport for a month and maybe giving it or not depending on whether your politicians have annoyed them recently or not. Half the people on our trip had to fly over it due to that stuff.

In the 1970 you could go via Afghanistan but that's been troubled for a while.

Two factors:

1) There are a lot of places with Islamist violence that are not safe or in some cases simply not permitted. This is much worse than it was in the 70s.

2) You don't get a free choice of routes. There are a limited number of countries and going around isn't always an option.

Let's consider the two routes I did part of in the 70s/80s:

Katmandu to London. (Note that I'm not 100% sure I'm remembering the route right. I'm trying to reconstruct what I can remember with a map.)

Katmandu to Delhi: I wasn't on it for this section, I do not believe it's too problematic.

Delhi to Lahore: Pakistan??

to Islamabad: Pakistan????

to Kabul: Nope!

to northern Afghanistan: Nope!

to Karachi: Afghanistan, Nope! Pakistan????

to Shiraz: Pakistan???? Iran, Nope! and denied.

to Tehran: Iran, Nope! and denied.

We did not plan on staying with the bus past Tehran so I'm not confident beyond that, I think it was going to go to Tabriz, then Istanbul and up through Europe.

Let's see what we can do now:

Google will not map the route. However, I can get a partial map: It is willing to route to Kashgar. It goes *east*. Then south through Myanmar (pretty much a nope). I'm completely unable to get it to go across the India/China border, I don't know if this is political or a matter of roads, I suspect the latter. After Myanmar it goes through Thailand (AFIAK fine), Laos (no idea), Vietnam (I think ok) and up into China. Note that Kashgar is in Xinjang province--I consider that a nope.

Google now fails me. At this point there's a pinch between Russia to the north and Iran to the south. The only route west is via Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan, to reach the Caspian sea. At least in the past you could take a ferry but I have no idea of what it connected. The only viable spot I see on the west coast is Baku, Azerbaijan, then I can force Google to take the route through Armenia and Turkiye. AFIAK Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are iffy, don't know about Azerbaijan and Armenia. I also haven't paid attention to where you might want to avoid in Turkiye.

Now, let's consider the other long trip I've done. Johannesburg to London.

South Africa: Parts are ok but there's no way I would overland. I can force it to approximate the route we were taking but there's a wall of Congo/South Sudan/Ethiopia that are Nope! places. And then there's a second barrier posed by the Sahara. You can take the western route through Nigeria (Nope!), Niger (no idea) and Algeria (my impression is Nope!) but AFIAK this route is actually forbidden at Timbuktu. Google will also map a route through Sudan (right through the combat area) up to Egypt--but AFIAK there's no way to proceed past that point. You have to cross into Israel (AFIAK temporarily blocked), then either up through Lebanon (Nope!) and Syria (Nope! and you will be denied) or through Jordan, then Syria (Nope! and you will be denied) or Iraq (Nope!, I suspect you will be denied.) Syria/Iraq make another uncrossable wall and you will have two damning stamps in your passport. (Israel will not stamp your passport, but Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon will. Once you've crossed an Israeli land border your passport is tainted and can't be used in a bunch of Muslim nations.) Trying to hug the western coast you'll hit Western Sahara (a Nope!) and I think some of those places along the coast are also Nope!s.

But...it is literally safer today than at any other time in the world previously (during human habitation). You might just have become more jaded or cautious over these years, as it is also well-established that younger people tend to be less cautious than older people.

Untimely deaths are much lower than in the 1970s. The difference is in your perception

Yup. There used to be "tour" groups that operated Katmandu to London. Sort of like this bus service but expecting to spend time in the cities it passed through. In 1975 I (with my parents) did what was supposed to be Delhi to Tehran, but we ended up leaving in Shiraz because of a breakdown, it was going to take too long to fix.

I've also done part of the Johannesburg to London route. Rougher, we were in a truck fitted out for passengers and most nights were in tents. Again, breakdowns, we were forced to leave before crossing the Sahara.

Neither route would be sane to do these days. Nor am I aware of any other such long route that's still sane. Such overland travel takes longer than flying by air but you see so much more of what you're passing through.

Looks like this was the bus: https://i1.wp.com/www.techtraveleat.com/wp-content/uploads/2...

From a link I found in Wikipedia: https://www.techtraveleat.com/story-of-london-culcutta-bus-s...

https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/london-to-calc...

Love the advertisement for British Overseas Airways Corporation on the bus: "Next time we'll fly"

Nowadays the longest regular bus trip is from Rio de Janeiro do Lima, Peru. It's 6200km and takes 5 days to complete.

Istanbul to London, 12000 Kilometers https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccahughes/2023/03/29/the-wo...

12k? I wonder what route they take. Direct, it is about 3000km. Central Europe is small.

Seems like a tourist trip: it goes all over Europe. Nice, but not really a regular bus ride.

A damn shame such a cool article has no photos.

Exactly. I really wanted to see what a bus with sleepers for everyone, a full kitchen and restrooms looked like. It couldn’t possibly have fit that many passengers.

Edit: I found pictures. It was a double decker.

There are photos in the article references! I didn't find one of the kitchen.

https://curlytales.com/this-was-the-worlds-longest-bus-route... https://www.techtraveleat.com/story-of-london-culcutta-bus-s...

More pictures here:

https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/london-to-calc...

Sounds like some low-hanging fruit for screenwriters wanting to make a great movie.

Sounds fairly similar to the famous Orient Express, if much longer and more unreliable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail

Yeah, so the plot would have to be less murder-mystery, and more action-adventure/rom-com then.

The sleekness and opulence being contrasted with a grisly murder works with Orient Express.

So to get a contrast with the rugged and dirty and tiring road, you'd need the nobleness of the protagonist/s to shine above that.

That or you could have a really depressing tragedy as a road movie.

Not exactly about this bus line, but close enough:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serpent_(TV_series)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunki_(film)

Somewhat related: check out the book "The Way of the World" (L'Usage du monde, in the original French) [0] by Nicolas Bouvier about a pair of friends that travel by car from Switzerland to India in the 1960s. As others have mentioned, such a trip may be impossible today.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Usage_du_monde

My uncle has tails of going overland twice once by motorcycle in the the late 60’s and a second time in the late 70’s with a group in an ambulance. Many stories but one I find interesting is that he has 2 photos he thinks taken by the same man at the acropolis. The photos from the 60’s the acropolis looks like an Abandon ruined. The second photo from the 70’s looks like a ruin with a few more people.

I'd love to have travelled Europe and Asia like that, before the current over load of tourists we are now at. (I see this first hand as my home city is major tourism destination ow, number of tourists has doubled in ten years)

Good news is that you can still have amazing places to yourself, at least in Asia. Vast majority of tourists flock to select few locations, the rule of thumb is if some place sounds familiar to you, it's overcrowded and has been for a while. You either need to do a little bit of research or just take a bike and ride a few kms

I visited Calcutta a few years ago (albeit during low season) and I have seen 2 (two) western tourists in a week. Last year I went to Arunachal Pradesh and met exactly zero western tourists in 10 days

I have been traveling a lot and since the 1980s tourism, as in adventure, and exploration has been slowly but surely moved into the direction of being a theme park.

Airbnbs further shoved locals out of their own towns so you get to places just to see few different buildings and monuments but at the end of the day there's no real touch with locals and their culture.

Bar Madagascar and India I really cannot say I have seen many places where I didn't feel I was still where I left.

Even Japan is strikingly different. Tokyo has changed tremendously (and shifted extremely to the west culturally) to the point Japanese culture in many areas seems a leftover for tourists. Kyoto suffered this brutal westernization a bit less, but feels like it's just slower.

Anyway the homogenization of music, culture, language, habits, technologies, food and what not is definitely a con when it comes to traveling and wanting to explore a different culture and life.

We traveled by train between Florida and Pennsylvania in the 70”s. We would stay in Washington DC to go the miseums which were always empty during thanksgiving.

Theme park is exactly how I describe the city centre of my city. I very badly maintained theme park with overflowing bins, over priced pubs, restaurants, shops and graffiti (though I can't blame the last one on tourists)

Yeah, I'm jealous of my grandparents' ability to do that - my grandfather founded a company, cashed out to retire early, and spent a couple decades travelling extensively, prior to the age of social media.

What's interesting about the Acropolis photos?

The contrast of how ignored the Acropolis was in in the 60’s and 70’s compared to now. International leisure travel and musuem visits have changed drastically in my lifetime. Even the places I have visited are inaccessible compared to 30 years ago.

>After some years the bus met with an accident and became unusable

It was just one bus?

This particular one was a single bus. Looks like there were 30+ operators running similar services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_b...

That sounds so amazing. Eurasian counterpart to the Green Tortoise!

Unfortunately, the whole middle section of the route has exprienced a demographic explosion followed by political destabilization and muslim radicalization, and you would not want to traverse these countries over land.

It makes sense to remember that all these countries were just fine very recently such as to be passable by a bus full of hippies, before they started making a bad use of the area they take up on the globe.

Leaving aside any physical ability etc., there are a bunch of places that I might have done 30 years ago but wouldn't today whether because of an explosion in popularity or just because it feels as if it would be less safe. (Of course there are also places in e.g. Eastern Europe I might have been less inclined to travel to at one point.)

The West certainly had a hand in destabilizing some of those areas (like Iran).

I would say that as of today, the Middle East is destabilizing Europe right back. The US got off easy.

> you would not want to traverse these countries over land.

You probably wouldn't. But people do and it seems fine. Turkey and Iran have actually decent train networks now, so you don't even have to go by bus. I think you can go all the way to Zahedan. Cross at Taftan and then bus to Quetta, but from there you can hop on the train again to India, cross to Amritsar and on to Calcutta.

Iran is likely to imprison a Westerner for years for trying that.

For… taking a train? Getting a visa might be tricky, but I’m fairly sure it’s legal to get a train, even in Iran.

seat61 is a good quick reference for train travel and has a site on London to India overland: https://www.seat61.com/europe-to-india-overland.htm - as you've said Zahedan to Quetta is the hard bit to do by train. It sounds like the problem for many is likely to be getting an Iranian visa: https://www.seat61.com/Iran.htm#Visas

If you are American, it will be tricky, yeah. For Europeans it should be doable. I managed to get a 7 day transit visa that could be extended to 10

Zahedan to the border: taxi.

Taftan to Quetta: a bus, leaves before sunset to travel out of the worst heat. Takes about 10-12h. The bus has two massive diesel engines, one in the front driving the bus forward, one in the back to drive the AC.

In the 600 or so km about half of it has some pavement, rest is just desert. The bus does not slow down for potholes, dunes, anything. You jump a lot.

Every couple of hours bus stops, half of the time for people to go in the desert to squat and the other half to pray. Try not to mix them up, could be dangerous.

The route comes within a few km of Afgani border but that does not matter the baluchistan region does not have much of dealings with the central govt.

Quetta is very-very dangerous for westerners, lots of kidnappings. I only found out later, thankfully.

The train from Quetta to Lahore takes about 26h. There is 1st class AC sleeper, 1st class sleeper and second class.

The 1st class feels like it was last updated before independence.

The train crosses wast deserts where temperature is 50C-ish.

This was more than 15 years ago, things might have changed YMMV.

Quetta was nicer in 1980s before Hanna lake started to dry up. My mom used to go for summer vacation road trips there from Karachi.

God forbid if someone grades the Russian Federation on use of the area it takes up. The old SCTV skit comes to mind.

Russians are constantly asking themselves this question, "aren't we taking up the area in vain".

The corollaries to these questions may surprise you, though.

I can see how you are are offended by this question, though. People in California had a long thought about it and has decided for the whole world that this question is not permitted, like they decide everything for the whole globe.

I am not in California. Rest assured, though that not only is my family background from one of your “middle section” countries in question, I have many Ukrainian and Russian friends. Let us not pretend you’re referring to some incipient Middle Eastern or Central/South Asian Chaadayev here.

I can't believe none of your Ukrainian and Russian friends grade countries in terms of whether they take up the area in vain. They may not use this specific wording, though they might as well do.

I wonder if "middle section" countries also use the arguments that they were so great N centuries ago that they don't have to reason their existence today.

Actually, what my Russian advisor (studied at MEPhI and Kurchatov) said was that establishing industry in Russia is a less effective use of money than just pumping oil esp. taking into account the cost of heating the factories so it might as well be moved to Malaysia where the climate is better. He also said Turkey was better than Sochi for vacation. Does that answer your question?

As you can see he is thinking about that all right.

The question for him is whether we want to uproot the world and rebuild it in the most energy-efficient way possible. That would affect most everyone in the world: I'm not sure the Malays want to be that global industrial hab. Perhaps they enjoy their jungle more than hosting industry for the whole world. Seeing as they already have lots of it.

The skit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqKkYYALMU

> It makes sense to remember that all these countries were just fine very recently

The entire Middle East was colonized and f_cked up over a century by the US, UK, and France.

I'm sorry that I can't visit these countries now, but (assuming you are a white Westerner) to say that they were "fine" and then blame them for current problems - is a bit steep.

You should spend more time talking to non-white people from non-white countries. Just this afternoon I was chatting about global affairs with an economist from an Asian country, and although he is quite "liberal," his educated and very-well-informed point of view on global conflict is very different from what you'll read in American newspapers.

Something similar launched recently: https://bustolondon.in/

The Beirut-Baghdad over desert bus was apparently more quite something too:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairn_Transport_Company

Hoo boy, you weren't kidding:

> The drivers were a colourful group of mostly English, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, or Americans, known for their drinking and whoring. In order to keep them out of brothels and know where to find them, the Nairns gave each one a house and a girl for company. One-eyed John Reid used a Cadillac to chase down and shoot a cheetah. Ryan, an Australian, was often drunk and filled his water bottles with arak, a local spirit.

Different time.

Wouldn't mind being a desert driver for a while, as a between-STEM-jobs occupation ;)

Is it seeing this with rose-tinted glasses, or before the late 70s it was indeed actually safer (physically, not medically) to undertake such a trip?

I would say it was safer back then. The thing is the governments weren't hostile. And bandits didn't have guns.

Crossing southern Iran we actually came across bandits. There was a chain of people across the road, including some that did not appear to be adults yet. The instructions from the authorities: treat it as a deadly force situation. Do not stop to render aid if someone is hit. The driver stepped on the gas, the line broke at the last instant, I think we passed a couple of feet from one of them.

How would that play out now??

How did this bus cross the English Channel?

Probably used a ferry just like lots do today.

I think the more developed we become, the less time we have for such things.

We blame safety but folks used to take ridiculous risks back in the days. They didn't have global maps or network to call home for starters. There were no translation tools and there weren't as many airports or international flights in case someone needed to get back home.

I have personally realised that we pay in our own life's time to achieve the modern ways of life. We gave up our explorer ways, nature loving ways to be in nicely walled houses and the city lifestyle. We became apprehensive of the old ways.

Also the ones who didn’t make it back didn’t write enthralling tales about their adventures. You only hear about the trips that went well (well defined as returned home alive).

Not true, there are adventurers for whom we hear the enthralling tales that preceded their demise. Or ones whose disappearance triggered enormous interest - consider Amelia Earhart or George Mallory.

We dedicate so much to the ones who perish along the way. I'm not saying we recollect everyone but it's not that they aren't known.

Being more nomadic than my peers, I have felt that rural parts of many places are much safer than cities. People are welcoming in ways we have forgotten.

The mortality rate from things like long bus trips is very low. I'm not sure bus trip problems are that enthralling though, on the whole.

Put another way we just winged it a lot more. Probably did more upfront planning too.

Not necessarily, some of us have those career jobs while keeping the adventure level relatively high. You can still go backpacking in remote parts of the world, even 1 week trip can give you tons of experience if planned well.

Some of us do extreme sports impossible in 60s or 70s, and thats a healthy dose of risk and adventuring (ie paragliding, diving or sport climbing for me).

Some of us don't live in city centers, not because we outright hate it, but simply have a better and healthier choice (not giga cities just big enough so commuting when needed is still sane, wild forests and mountains nearby or at doorsteps).

But this all doesn't come on its own, one has to fight for it a bit, and be a bit lucky too, just like with rest of life.

The option to take time off and travel is still there and I think there are a larger number of people say bumming around Asia than there was when I was younger. For some reason Americans seem to have a cultural problem with taking a year off but it's fairly common in many other countries.

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