[HN Gopher] London-Calcutta Bus Service
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London-Calcutta Bus Service
Author : DeathArrow
Score : 131 points
Date : 2024-06-11 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| hilux wrote:
| That sounds so amazing. Eurasian counterpart to the Green
| Tortoise!
| detourdog wrote:
| 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.
| pipes wrote:
| 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)
| postsantum wrote:
| 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
| epolanski wrote:
| 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.
| detourdog wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| What's interesting about the Acropolis photos?
| aridiculous wrote:
| Sounds like some low-hanging fruit for screenwriters wanting to
| make a great movie.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Sounds fairly similar to the famous Orient Express, if much
| longer and more unreliable.
| et-al wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail
| golergka wrote:
| Not exactly about this bus line, but close enough:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serpent_(TV_series)
| lawlessone wrote:
| >After some years the bus met with an accident and became
| unusable
|
| It was just one bus?
| umeshunni wrote:
| 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...
| gumby wrote:
| 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.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| They drove from Adelaide? Any idea how they got across the wet
| bits?
| zamadatix wrote:
| You take ferries/ships as needed on such trips, usually with
| the intent to use them for as little of the trip as
| reasonable.
| dvdplm wrote:
| 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.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| >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.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course. I just think it's probably also true that the
| expectations of what is customary and "normal" have
| probably also changed.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Along the way, viral often tragic stories made the pessimist
| out of most of us.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| 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.
| thriftwy wrote:
| 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.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| This bus used to go through countries like Afghanistan that
| were definitely below the median back then too
| lmm wrote:
| 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).
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| Bah I wouldn't be surprised it is actually safer today. Problem
| is today there are far, far more rules and regulations.
| dheera wrote:
| 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.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| 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.
| jmwilson wrote:
| 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.
| forinti wrote:
| Nowadays the longest regular bus trip is from Rio de Janeiro do
| Lima, Peru. It's 6200km and takes 5 days to complete.
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| A damn shame such a cool article has no photos.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| 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.
| gia_ferrari wrote:
| 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...
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(page generated 2024-06-11 23:01 UTC)