> 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.
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
Really good tires, battery and passenger butts to endure such a long journey in the bus :)
Did this... really have to be pointed out? :)
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.
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)
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.
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...
I'm curious about the passengers on the bus and doubt everyone went the full distance on it.
Upper class in traditional British usage refers to old money — the titled, old landowners, gentry etc.
> The journey took fifty days...
...so not for the working folks.
- 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