London to Calcutta by Bus (2022) | Hacker News Reader

London to Calcutta by Bus (2022)

amusingplanet.com

127 pointsCGMthrowaway37 comments

Needs (2022), in particular for this part:

> 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.

This bus route has its own Wikipedia page, well deserved too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%E2%80%93Calcutta_bus_se...

this is more up-to-date experience - overland from Portugal through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan to India and to China

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

Thank you for sharing. It seems bus is enjoying fully.

Really good tires, battery and passenger butts to endure such a long journey in the bus :)

There is still more than one company that runs a bus from London to Nairobi via Cape Town.

> One even went as far as Sydney. The last leg of the journey from India to Sydney was made on ship.

Did this... really have to be pointed out? :)

Kinda disappointing they skipped out on all of East Asia. I follow a few overland people who will drive through all of Southeast Asia and make it to East Timor before taking a ferry to Darwin and driving the rest of Australia.

Back then Burma was highly restricted, you would not have been allowed to drive through.

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.

Back then, people taking those buses enjoyed life more than most do today.

> people taking those buses enjoyed life more than most do today

Benefits of being rich.

A £150 round trip ticket in 1957 is the equivalent of £4,600 today, and in an era when average wages were around £400 per year [0].

Taking months off to bum around the hippy trail in the 1960s spending almost half of the average person's salary would have put you in the upper middle class to say the least. Alternatively, imagine spending £15,000 on a multi-month trip in 2026 like going to Antarctica, ascending an ultra, participating in the Dakar Rally, or racing the Iditarod.

Plenty of Brits in the era (especially the lower middle class and upwardly mobile) would have decided to spend that money on a ticket to move to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or America instead.

[0] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/AWEPPUKQ

Especially when it was £20 to move the whole family (kids were free) to Australia. My great uncle and aunt did just that, after national service he was in business working for Walls ice cream. Took himself and two kids off in early 60s, were in a a Nissen hut for a few weeks til he found a job over there.

Commonly known as the "Ten Pound Pom" scheme [0] which ran from 1945-1972

An incredible return on investment. I bet many ended up with higher wages, better health, better housing etc (though I think about 1/4 ended up returning, at a large expense)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Pound_Poms

> I bet many ended up with higher wages, better health, better housing etc

Yep. The developmental indicators of the entirety of Western Europe didn't catch up to the US, Canada, or ANZ until the early 2000s based on HDI.

That's how devastating the effect of WW2 was.

Lived it and got the t-shirt LOL!

I know a couple people from my parents' generation who did the hippie trail in their early 20s and they certainly aren't rich. Basic Austrian middle class.

When did they travel and how much did they pay?

From there you can easily extrapolate how much it deviated from contemporary wages (roughly 30,000 Austrian schillings a year for a Viennese industrial laborer with a union contract in 1964).

A lot of people who think they are from middle class backgrounds are actually in the upper cream of society but never realize it.

Here's economic data for wages and household income in Austria back in 1965 [0] (page 2 and 11).

[0] - https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

Not completely true. I had a friend (now departed RIP) from a working class background who managed to get over there, before the Beatles. He worked his passage on a ship to India before heading inland. It could be done.

I'm curious about the passengers on the bus and doubt everyone went the full distance on it.

The class system in the UK is not entirely wealth related. Therefore you could be rich enough to afford it and not upper class or upper class and not able to afford it.

Upper class in traditional British usage refers to old money — the titled, old landowners, gentry etc.

> Taking months off to bum around the hippy trail in the 1960s spending almost half of the average person's salary would have put you in the upper middle class to say the least.

Worth noting that a substantial amount of people doing the overland route were hitchhiking with any vehicle than came along, or were sharing a ride with another westerner who charged less than a commercial bus. The journey was so accessible that Yugoslavs, not a poor nationality but not a rich one either, were a prominent group on it.

Citation needed. Perhaps they took the buses because everyday life was so much more boring then.

Why do you think so?

Everyone enjoys their life in a different way. I'd be absolutely miserable traveling 50 days by a bus.

I’m sure a lot of working people would enjoy life more if they didn’t have to work as much as they do in order to provide shelter and food to their families.

Pure adventure!

> The journey took fifty days...

...so not for the working folks.

Backpackers didn't have jobs. Or deoderant.

Depends on where (maybe mostly what country) you work. I get 35 vacation days per year, which if we include the weekends adds up to 51 days. Not that I would ever want to spend those days on a bus. And then I'd have to get back as well.

How did the bus drive from England to mainland Europe? I'm not sure I'd class the journey as "by bus" if it also includes ferries

The ferries would be brief enough though. Probably less than 100 out of the total 10,000 miles.

Can you stay in the bus when it’s on the ferry?

For crossing the Channel, definitely not. A very special exception can be made with prior arrangement for those with disabilities that made entering & leaving their vehicle too cumbersome, but they aren't going to ride this kind of bus.

No, but you can when the bus is on the train in the tunnel.

This was in the 50s; the tunnel still wasn't far off science fiction at that point.

I'm sure I'd class the journey by bus because the reference to the necessary and proportionally tiny boat or eurotunnel crossing would be seen as obvious, unnecessary and annoying.

- did you come by plane?

- not at all! i went by foot, took a bus, went by foot, took a train, went by foot, took an elevator, went by foot, took the plane, went by foot, took a taxi, and then by foot

- al..right

Don't also forget the walk to get to the bus.

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