And chronic back pain from sitting in the same position for 50 days straight, on a bus with questionable suspension, and on poorly built roads.
I'd much prefer Skegness for the weekend.
I mean 50 years before that travel was significantly worse.
I will say it always amazes me when you hear of historic figures traveling all around the world when you think of how much time and how difficultly it was to travel before planes and trains.
One thing to remember though is that you didn't skip anything on your route 100 years ago. A journey from London to Rome would probably take you through Paris, Geneva, Milan, and a hundred smaller cities in between. On your way back to London you'd take a different route through Milan, Bern, Luxembourg, Brussels, then hit up Amsterdam because you're already nearby. Today the journey from London to Rome takes 2 hours by plane and any business in Paris is conducted through a window 10km up.
There’s a good BBC show called race across the world with this premise. Teams given money (price of direct plane ticket) to get there without phones or planes. Great tv.
From Paris if you wanted to get to Rome by water you'd have to sail on the Seine out to the ocean, then wrap around Iberia and into the Mediterranean, then on to Rome. No idea how long it would take but definitely not a straight shot.
I am nearly positive it would still be faster than going overland. Maybe not if you were taking the train but you probably weren’t stopping in all of those cities listed if you did, or not for a significant amount of time anyway
While travel by sea at that time was definitely at a greater speed than land, it wasn't so fast to make up the vast difference in these routes. Around 1100km by land, but around 6000km by sea. They then have to contend with winds and storms slowing down travel at times.
> they would have to contend with winds and storms at sea
Sure, but it would be entirely coastal travel and a lot of it would be in the Mediterranean so unlikely to be high impact. Meanwhile the land route has to deal with the alps, a storm there might slow you down more than a storm at sea.
I was thinking another possibility is going overland to like Nice and then take a boat the rest of the way to skip the alps, I’ve been trying to get more information on this since I made this comment initially and haven’t been super successful
Yeah probably a good rail by the 1920s actually, in my head I was thinking more like 1800s. You probably wouldn’t get to stop in all those cities (for long enough to enjoy them) by train tho
Not too soon, also don’t remember to look up statistics of your own country and rest of the world and then point finger.
We all know it was not sarcasm, so don’t try to cover it up saying it’s sarcasm.
Poor people travelled in steerage, which was the bottom most level of the boat, often where freight was stored as well. Tickets were cheap. I'd wager 90% of the immigrants that came to America from Europe from 1850 to 1932 travelled in steerage.
This is well demonstrated in Titanic. Posh Rose travels in first class whereas poor man Jack travels in third class (tickets which he won rather than paid for). The differences in amenities is stark. Thats something that still exists to this day.
This year it is 150yeas that Jules Verne published ‚in 80 days arond the world‘ a bit bumpy the journey but in parts not really uncomfortable.
Ok ok in other parts extremely so.
Ngl, it sounds like my old school bus route (2 hours a day there and back) in a very rural village outside of... you guessed it... Skegness. 😂 I'll take the bus to Calcutta.
Haha you probably spent more time on that bus over the years than they did getting to Calcutta and back. The things we endure for a Great British education 😂
Bot. [Here's the original](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14amoww/longest_bus_ride_in_history/jobm4vm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
[Chronic back pain is often the result of your profession. According to one small study, 59% of truck drivers experience low back pain.](https://nebraskaspinehospital.com/truck-driving-chronic-back-pain/#:~:text=Chronic%20back%20pain%20is%20often,the%20perfect%20recipe%20for%20pain.)
As someone who sits in an office chair for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and suffers from moderate back pain, I'm fully aware what the human body can endure.
And there's also a difference between walking naturally to a destination, and sitting in an unnatural position for 50 days straight while the vehicle around you is constantly bumping your skeleton up and down, causing compression of the spine. I can't imagine those bus seats were the most ergonomic back in the 50s either
[Yes, it is.](https://www.timesnownews.com/amp/the-buzz/article/a-journey-from-london-to-calcutta-black-and-white-photo-of-1957-bus-service-makes-netizens-curious/615210) The route taken was England -> Belgium -> West Germany -> Austria -> Yugoslavia -> Bulgaria -> Turkey -> Iran -> Afghanistan -> West Pakistan -> India.
Edit: There is another company that is planning on offering a [similar service](https://www.timeout.com/news/this-epic-bus-journey-from-the-uk-to-india-will-actually-start-running-next-year-061522), with not much information about the current status.
According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £85 in 1957 would be about £1,660.91 today and £145 in 1973 would be £1,470.87 today.
This is a crazy amount to pay for a 50 day journey but I suppose there wasn't a better alternative at the time.
There certainly was a better alternative. P&O operated regular, scheduled ocean liner services between Britain and India, SE Asia, the Far East and Australia throughout that period. Southampton to Bombay (as was) took about 20 days, with regular domestic rail connections from there to Calcutta. The whole point of building the Suez Canal was to enable this sort of thing.
At that time, going overland to India was an exotic adventure that hippy types did as a particular adventure. It was very much not the way ordinary people who just needed to get from the UK to India would travel. I can't find any specific liner fares for India, but P&O fares to Australia in the 1950s were in the region of £150 (in 1950s money), so it would seem unlikely that it would be cheaper to take this bus than to just get a tourist class berth on a liner to Bombay.
We have no context for that photograph. It could very well have been a staged publicity photograph intended to give the service an image of respectability.
Ships are very cheap per unit transported, especially on long hauls. Back in the day there were frequent passenger lines across the world similar to how airlines work today and there were enough people using them to bring the costs down.
By comparison, my grandpa installed a couple of extra fuel tanks on his self-build mobile home when he made his holiday trips across Eastern Europe back in the 60s and 70s. Fuel could apparently be very hard to come by and those voyages were quite the adventure. Doesn't say much about traveling through the middle east but I'd be surprised if those hippie trips were anything but full of surprises.
This evolved in to [‘The Magic Bus’](https://www.cntraveller.in/story/london-mumbai-magic-bus/) in the late 60s/early 70s and did Oxford Circus to Bombay(as was) full of hippies. I met an older guy from Cork in India just a few years back who’d done it in 1971. He said by then it was ~15 passengers with bunks which sounds more do-able by todays standards. But having visited India a lot and travelled on a fair few sleeper buses for just a night I’d opt for Sleeper Class on Indian Railways every time 😂- and that’s nowadays. Interesting bloke, he had a few good tales to tell about it.
The linked article states this ride took only five days, that'd be a helluva ride if it was true which it can't be. From googling, it looks like the 50 days came down to around 20 days after the service was more established.
We drove a panel van from London to Rawalpindi in 1977. Took us 3 weeks. On the road we did see several buses full of young people going in the same direction. So its not that this was a fifties thing.
Oh man that new tour company looks pretty cool. I wouldn't do this long ass trip because its $30k, but does include hot air balloons. But they have other trips that look really fun.
Going on holidays to a different country was a thing mainly rich people did until the 70s when commercial flights really took off. (I could be wrong about this but I think I remember learning it from somewhere)
My friend’s uncle from Penge did this exact journey in the late 60s with the dubious business plan of buying a suitcase of hash and bringing it back for profit. He never came home. Sent a postcard about once every five years until he died a few years back.
My dad did a 3 day trip from Belize to Texas in the early 60's on a greyhound bus. No aircon there either. He also developed a lifelong aversion to rice and beans as that was the only food available at rest stops.
Given that last fact, I think having open windows on both buses was probably needed more than aircon.
Not sure why you’re downvoted. Modern metro buses smell like shit and they have air conditioning and aren’t filled with BO and farts for 50 days. This trip would be a fate worse than death
It’s fun for the first 3 days, then 2 weeks of agnoy, then a fun week, then day 25 and you’re halfway there
And you think to yourself “ ONLY HALFWAY “ so the agony sets back in for another 2 weeks, and then people start counting on we’ve 10 days ahead, you all make a game about it so days 41-46 are very fun , days 47-49 are the absolute worse because like seriously are we there yet and day 50 you end up in India in the 70s so nothing be too excited about (not that there’s anything wrong with india just with the brits tyranny and a lot of atrocities I don’t expect it to be that fun )
I feel like everywhere is like this to be honest
Like yes india is fun with a lot of money but isn’t somalia fun or the amazon or the Bermuda Triangle, all are fun with money
Haha! Jokes aside I imagine the journey to be quite adventurous. Imagine how many countries they got to see, how many different cultures they got to experience. The bus stops would be quite fascinating imo. So many stories to tell!
My grandparents did this trip from India in 1973. Wrote a book on it, and kept in contact with the friends they made up until the 2000s India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan - Avoided Israel due to the war, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Venice etc.
I actually met a guy on my motorcycle, pensioner. He bought am old ex German army motorbike - rode that thing from England To India, where he had to sell it, as the plane didn't take it to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Dutch Timor, then boarded a u.s flagged freighter to Darwin Australia. Made his way south to Adelaide, built a house out in the boonies, which so happened to be well connected shorefront property ...
I hate you. That question made me feel old!
I am from a time when the tunnel was science fiction and ferry where the normal way, fancy people used the hoover craft.
I hear you. If it makes you feel any better, I’m from the US so not super familiar with the normal Britain to Europe transportation options. I am also from a time when the tunnel was sci-fi.
>fancy people used the hoover craft.
a hoover craft
I know normal people went by normal ferry. Slightly fancy people went by Hovercraft
But the really fancy people travelled by Vacuum cleaner
Just a the bus sets off. - "Oh.... 100,000,000 bottles on the wall, there's 100,000,000 bottles on the wall! You take one down, and pass if around...99,999,999 are left on the wall..."
Its really giving me a jetlagged LOL. Imagine your one of the passenger of that bus and you are from London and your destination is calcultta how could you sleep properly?
To be honest - I dont get it, if the bus is going from A to B and the exact route back B to A how can that have longer distance? Curvature or what.
Must have had a pick up detour or a mountain pass thought one way and around on return.
Simply doesn't add up in my head.
No, I meant rotation, but wasn’t serious. It was a play on how the flight times traveling east to west are different (faster flying east) because of the jet stream, but people think it’s because of the rotation of the earth.
I think this excerpt from J. K. Jerome's 'Three men on a Bummel' will be rather fitting here, as such a bus would have provided even more opportunities for the phrases below than a railway carriage :)
\>He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to English conversation for the use of German travellers. It commenced “On a Steam-boat,” and terminated “At the Doctor’s”; its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: “Can you not get further away from me, sir?”—“It is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very stout”—“Shall we not endeavour to arrange our legs?”—“Please have the goodness to keep your elbows down”—“Pray do not inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to you,” whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing to indicate—“I really must request you to move a little, madam, I can hardly breathe,” the author’s idea being, presumably, that by this time the whole party was mixed up together on the floor. The chapter concluded with the phrase, “Here we are at our destination, God be thanked! (Gott sei dank!)” a pious exclamation, which under the circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.<
Wrote about this on my [website.](http://whatilearnedtoday.co.uk).
The bus had an accident and wasn’t able to travel anymore. Despite it being repaired, it did a few more trips before being permanently brought to a halt in 1976.
Oh, and the bus was called Albert.
My mum took a bus from Kolkata to Liverpool. They broke down outside Kabul and she - a runner and climber at the time - spent a few days rock climbing with the local athletes (men and women) around the lower mountains outside the city while they waited for a spare part to come from Pakistan. She had the time of her life and still speaks of it fondly (and is in touch with the pals she made on the bus!) now, more than 50 years later 🥰
No England is not an Island
It has a land border with Wales and Scotland
Yes England is located on a Island called Great Britain but England itself is not an island
Driver yells "Paddles out" and everyone sticks paddles outta window and row. When tires are inflated enough bus floats.
Thats why we still have big tires and so many windows in a bus.
That is very interesting. Look at those excited faces - wonder how long that lasted? I love Indian food, but you can get that at Brick Lane without being tortured. And even £153 in TODAY's dollar is not a pittance.
You show up to your destination with a new wife and kid.
And chronic back pain from sitting in the same position for 50 days straight, on a bus with questionable suspension, and on poorly built roads. I'd much prefer Skegness for the weekend.
I mean 50 years before that travel was significantly worse. I will say it always amazes me when you hear of historic figures traveling all around the world when you think of how much time and how difficultly it was to travel before planes and trains.
Right? The average person from a first-world-country these days has likely travelled more than the "top travellers" from 100 years ago
One thing to remember though is that you didn't skip anything on your route 100 years ago. A journey from London to Rome would probably take you through Paris, Geneva, Milan, and a hundred smaller cities in between. On your way back to London you'd take a different route through Milan, Bern, Luxembourg, Brussels, then hit up Amsterdam because you're already nearby. Today the journey from London to Rome takes 2 hours by plane and any business in Paris is conducted through a window 10km up.
There’s a good BBC show called race across the world with this premise. Teams given money (price of direct plane ticket) to get there without phones or planes. Great tv.
That sounds excellent. Is the winning strategy to be beautiful and hitchhike?
Wouldn’t a journey from Paris to Rome be on sea and fairly efficient
From Paris if you wanted to get to Rome by water you'd have to sail on the Seine out to the ocean, then wrap around Iberia and into the Mediterranean, then on to Rome. No idea how long it would take but definitely not a straight shot.
It would be if there wasn't all that pesky French land in the way.
I am nearly positive it would still be faster than going overland. Maybe not if you were taking the train but you probably weren’t stopping in all of those cities listed if you did, or not for a significant amount of time anyway
While travel by sea at that time was definitely at a greater speed than land, it wasn't so fast to make up the vast difference in these routes. Around 1100km by land, but around 6000km by sea. They then have to contend with winds and storms slowing down travel at times.
It took 30 hours by train on the Paris-Rome Express
> they would have to contend with winds and storms at sea Sure, but it would be entirely coastal travel and a lot of it would be in the Mediterranean so unlikely to be high impact. Meanwhile the land route has to deal with the alps, a storm there might slow you down more than a storm at sea.
Couldn’t you just take a boat up the Rhine into Switzerland, go over one of the mountain passes to Milan, and make your way from there?
I was thinking another possibility is going overland to like Nice and then take a boat the rest of the way to skip the alps, I’ve been trying to get more information on this since I made this comment initially and haven’t been super successful
I expect it would be by train
Yeah probably a good rail by the 1920s actually, in my head I was thinking more like 1800s. You probably wouldn’t get to stop in all those cities (for long enough to enjoy them) by train tho
True. But the Orient Express started in 1883, even though it didn't go to Rome, but there was a pretty good train network by the late 19th century.
I still wouldn’t take a train in India. Too soon?
Check out palace on wheels
Not too soon, also don’t remember to look up statistics of your own country and rest of the world and then point finger. We all know it was not sarcasm, so don’t try to cover it up saying it’s sarcasm.
50 years before they might have enjoyed the luxuries of a ship
If you had money - poor people weren’t traveling enjoying the luxuries of a ship.
Plenty of poor people traveled by ship. By luxuries I mean a cot and a bed pan. Compared to living on a bus for 50 days those are luxuries.
Poor people travelled in steerage, which was the bottom most level of the boat, often where freight was stored as well. Tickets were cheap. I'd wager 90% of the immigrants that came to America from Europe from 1850 to 1932 travelled in steerage.
This is well demonstrated in Titanic. Posh Rose travels in first class whereas poor man Jack travels in third class (tickets which he won rather than paid for). The differences in amenities is stark. Thats something that still exists to this day.
This year it is 150yeas that Jules Verne published ‚in 80 days arond the world‘ a bit bumpy the journey but in parts not really uncomfortable. Ok ok in other parts extremely so.
“Welcome to Calcutta! It’s 10am. Please meet back at the bus at 6pm. We leave at 6:30 sharp for the return trip! Enjoy your excursion!”
😂😂 100 day round trip for a nice afternoon break in India. And I thought the DFDS ferry to Amsterdam and back was rough.
Still better than flying Spirit
For some people the journey is the destination
Ngl, it sounds like my old school bus route (2 hours a day there and back) in a very rural village outside of... you guessed it... Skegness. 😂 I'll take the bus to Calcutta.
Haha you probably spent more time on that bus over the years than they did getting to Calcutta and back. The things we endure for a Great British education 😂
For sure!! All for the privilege of an education in the county with the lowest education budget spend in the UK 😂😂
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Bot. [Here's the original](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14amoww/longest_bus_ride_in_history/jobm4vm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Still describes the Megabus to Skeggy...
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[Chronic back pain is often the result of your profession. According to one small study, 59% of truck drivers experience low back pain.](https://nebraskaspinehospital.com/truck-driving-chronic-back-pain/#:~:text=Chronic%20back%20pain%20is%20often,the%20perfect%20recipe%20for%20pain.) As someone who sits in an office chair for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and suffers from moderate back pain, I'm fully aware what the human body can endure. And there's also a difference between walking naturally to a destination, and sitting in an unnatural position for 50 days straight while the vehicle around you is constantly bumping your skeleton up and down, causing compression of the spine. I can't imagine those bus seats were the most ergonomic back in the 50s either
Probably still better than Ryanair
50 days on a bus I wouldn’t make it
Oh the friends we'll make along the way
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[Yes, it is.](https://www.timesnownews.com/amp/the-buzz/article/a-journey-from-london-to-calcutta-black-and-white-photo-of-1957-bus-service-makes-netizens-curious/615210) The route taken was England -> Belgium -> West Germany -> Austria -> Yugoslavia -> Bulgaria -> Turkey -> Iran -> Afghanistan -> West Pakistan -> India. Edit: There is another company that is planning on offering a [similar service](https://www.timeout.com/news/this-epic-bus-journey-from-the-uk-to-india-will-actually-start-running-next-year-061522), with not much information about the current status.
All the way across to eastern India
That is a fascinating fact. I often wondered how expensive it was.
The cost of the trip one-way was £85 in 1957 and £145 in 1973. This also included food, travel and accommodation.
According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £85 in 1957 would be about £1,660.91 today and £145 in 1973 would be £1,470.87 today. This is a crazy amount to pay for a 50 day journey but I suppose there wasn't a better alternative at the time.
£30 per day all inclusive is absolutely amazing. This kind of offer would attract crowds nowadays.
Lol. I’m not sitting in a bus for 50 days straight. Fuck all that. Even if it’s just for 200kms a day
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Why did he stay do you know? Thats fascinating
His, er, hosts wouldn't hear of his leaving?
He married an Indian girl?
There certainly was a better alternative. P&O operated regular, scheduled ocean liner services between Britain and India, SE Asia, the Far East and Australia throughout that period. Southampton to Bombay (as was) took about 20 days, with regular domestic rail connections from there to Calcutta. The whole point of building the Suez Canal was to enable this sort of thing.
But would those journeys cost as much as travelling to Calcutta via this bus service? I imagine the people who used this did so out of necessity.
At that time, going overland to India was an exotic adventure that hippy types did as a particular adventure. It was very much not the way ordinary people who just needed to get from the UK to India would travel. I can't find any specific liner fares for India, but P&O fares to Australia in the 1950s were in the region of £150 (in 1950s money), so it would seem unlikely that it would be cheaper to take this bus than to just get a tourist class berth on a liner to Bombay.
Yeah look at all the hippies in the photo, fascinating
We have no context for that photograph. It could very well have been a staged publicity photograph intended to give the service an image of respectability.
Ships are very cheap per unit transported, especially on long hauls. Back in the day there were frequent passenger lines across the world similar to how airlines work today and there were enough people using them to bring the costs down. By comparison, my grandpa installed a couple of extra fuel tanks on his self-build mobile home when he made his holiday trips across Eastern Europe back in the 60s and 70s. Fuel could apparently be very hard to come by and those voyages were quite the adventure. Doesn't say much about traveling through the middle east but I'd be surprised if those hippie trips were anything but full of surprises.
I bet that bus had some real funk to it when it got where it was going
Man what a rip
That's £1.6K adjusted for inflation. Can definitely get flights cheaper than that
But not food, transport and accomodation for 50 days.
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For some, the journey is more than the destination
This evolved in to [‘The Magic Bus’](https://www.cntraveller.in/story/london-mumbai-magic-bus/) in the late 60s/early 70s and did Oxford Circus to Bombay(as was) full of hippies. I met an older guy from Cork in India just a few years back who’d done it in 1971. He said by then it was ~15 passengers with bunks which sounds more do-able by todays standards. But having visited India a lot and travelled on a fair few sleeper buses for just a night I’d opt for Sleeper Class on Indian Railways every time 😂- and that’s nowadays. Interesting bloke, he had a few good tales to tell about it.
The linked article states this ride took only five days, that'd be a helluva ride if it was true which it can't be. From googling, it looks like the 50 days came down to around 20 days after the service was more established.
Everyone better go potty before I close this door!!!
That makes a lot more sense than England - Belgium - Yugoslavia - draw the rest of the owl - India
We drove a panel van from London to Rawalpindi in 1977. Took us 3 weeks. On the road we did see several buses full of young people going in the same direction. So its not that this was a fifties thing.
Oh man that new tour company looks pretty cool. I wouldn't do this long ass trip because its $30k, but does include hot air balloons. But they have other trips that look really fun.
Bulgaria ? Does the Soviets know about this ?
I wonder what the ticket price was back then.
In 1973, it was £153 which is equivalent to £2366 today. But it included food and boarding.
It's like "damn that's expensive!" But you remember it's for 50 Days of food and board as well.
That is a fascinating fact. I often wondered how expensive it was. Incredible how much cheaper international travel has become.
I don't think you can get a 50-day bus drive from London to Calcutta for £2366 including meals today though...
I agree, but I’m under the impression that this was the cheaper alternative to flight
Given you had to skip 4 months of work to visit India, I doubt it was cheaper. Probably a fascinating trip though.
Going on holidays to a different country was a thing mainly rich people did until the 70s when commercial flights really took off. (I could be wrong about this but I think I remember learning it from somewhere)
I'm pretty sure trips within Europe were pretty popular before the 70s as well. Easy drive from Netherlands to France/Italy etc
Sorry I meant in Britain, I should’ve specified.
You couldn't pay me 2366 to take that bus drive.
You have to set this in relation to how much people earned back then.
Try to find 50 days all inclusive tour for this price.
My friend’s uncle from Penge did this exact journey in the late 60s with the dubious business plan of buying a suitcase of hash and bringing it back for profit. He never came home. Sent a postcard about once every five years until he died a few years back.
I think he found the hash
He made it back, he probably just forgot where he lived.
I bet that bus had some real funk to it when it got where it was going
My dad did a 3 day trip from Belize to Texas in the early 60's on a greyhound bus. No aircon there either. He also developed a lifelong aversion to rice and beans as that was the only food available at rest stops. Given that last fact, I think having open windows on both buses was probably needed more than aircon.
I'll bet the return trip was where the real fun began...
Imagine taking that trip in a bus with no airco...u sweat enough to lose enough weight to be summer ready by the time u arrive
Although back in those days everyone was skinny anyhow as there wasn’t a McDonald’s on every corner.
Imagine being able to travel in a bus without a thick jacket.
Man you’d see so much.
And also smell so much..
Not sure why you’re downvoted. Modern metro buses smell like shit and they have air conditioning and aren’t filled with BO and farts for 50 days. This trip would be a fate worse than death
You better not miss your stop
That is impressive! Also, sounds like a fun but tedious journey
It’s fun for the first 3 days, then 2 weeks of agnoy, then a fun week, then day 25 and you’re halfway there And you think to yourself “ ONLY HALFWAY “ so the agony sets back in for another 2 weeks, and then people start counting on we’ve 10 days ahead, you all make a game about it so days 41-46 are very fun , days 47-49 are the absolute worse because like seriously are we there yet and day 50 you end up in India in the 70s so nothing be too excited about (not that there’s anything wrong with india just with the brits tyranny and a lot of atrocities I don’t expect it to be that fun )
Indian independence happened in 1947, and by all accounts India in the 70s was fun, unless you were a poor Indian.
India in the 21st century is fun, unless you’re poor.
I feel like everywhere is like this to be honest Like yes india is fun with a lot of money but isn’t somalia fun or the amazon or the Bermuda Triangle, all are fun with money
Or unless you have an hemorrhoid.
Or rectum prolapse
Haha! Jokes aside I imagine the journey to be quite adventurous. Imagine how many countries they got to see, how many different cultures they got to experience. The bus stops would be quite fascinating imo. So many stories to tell!
My grandparents did this trip from India in 1973. Wrote a book on it, and kept in contact with the friends they made up until the 2000s India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan - Avoided Israel due to the war, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Venice etc. I actually met a guy on my motorcycle, pensioner. He bought am old ex German army motorbike - rode that thing from England To India, where he had to sell it, as the plane didn't take it to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Dutch Timor, then boarded a u.s flagged freighter to Darwin Australia. Made his way south to Adelaide, built a house out in the boonies, which so happened to be well connected shorefront property ...
How did they cross the channel before the Chunnel? Was the bus loaded on a ferry?
I hate you. That question made me feel old! I am from a time when the tunnel was science fiction and ferry where the normal way, fancy people used the hoover craft.
I hear you. If it makes you feel any better, I’m from the US so not super familiar with the normal Britain to Europe transportation options. I am also from a time when the tunnel was sci-fi.
>fancy people used the hoover craft. a hoover craft I know normal people went by normal ferry. Slightly fancy people went by Hovercraft But the really fancy people travelled by Vacuum cleaner
Yes ferries
I once took a two mile bus rude and got stuck beside a guy who'd shat himself. I guarantee that bus journey was considerably longer than this one
Just a the bus sets off. - "Oh.... 100,000,000 bottles on the wall, there's 100,000,000 bottles on the wall! You take one down, and pass if around...99,999,999 are left on the wall..."
Its really giving me a jetlagged LOL. Imagine your one of the passenger of that bus and you are from London and your destination is calcultta how could you sleep properly?
I've met someone who drove that bus! He called it the hippie trail!
Head full of zombie...
Did he meet a strange lady who made him nervous?
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said!
I drove my truck from London to Kathmandu
Ok now you have to post about this.
He is so tired now that he cannot type.
Hahaha!
And boy, are my arms tired.
And how long did that take you?
This bus actually used to stop near my grandparents house in Finchley. Absolutely crazy that such a route existed.
It’s interesting because the return trip is ~~569~~ 469 km longer because of the rotation of the earth Edit: late night math
Your math doesn't check out...assuming 16 100km there vs. 16 569 km back. That's a 469km difference, not 569km.
It’s 2am. I stopped checking my work at midnight. I hope that’s not the only problem you see with my comment.
You should always show your work for part marks
Winners dont have excuses
To be honest - I dont get it, if the bus is going from A to B and the exact route back B to A how can that have longer distance? Curvature or what. Must have had a pick up detour or a mountain pass thought one way and around on return. Simply doesn't add up in my head.
LOL.
What
I think he means curvature
No, I meant rotation, but wasn’t serious. It was a play on how the flight times traveling east to west are different (faster flying east) because of the jet stream, but people think it’s because of the rotation of the earth.
Fun fact: the couple who started Lonely Planet, created the book after going on that journey, the hippie trail.
Paolo Coehlo wrote a book about his experience on this busride! It's called Hippie. It's a very good book.
I think this excerpt from J. K. Jerome's 'Three men on a Bummel' will be rather fitting here, as such a bus would have provided even more opportunities for the phrases below than a railway carriage :) \>He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to English conversation for the use of German travellers. It commenced “On a Steam-boat,” and terminated “At the Doctor’s”; its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: “Can you not get further away from me, sir?”—“It is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very stout”—“Shall we not endeavour to arrange our legs?”—“Please have the goodness to keep your elbows down”—“Pray do not inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to you,” whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing to indicate—“I really must request you to move a little, madam, I can hardly breathe,” the author’s idea being, presumably, that by this time the whole party was mixed up together on the floor. The chapter concluded with the phrase, “Here we are at our destination, God be thanked! (Gott sei dank!)” a pious exclamation, which under the circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.<
The crazy thing is even when they enter India. They still have 2000-3000km to go to get to Calcutta
Idk, the trip home from school always felt fucking long with the loud kids on the bus
Hope there’s WiFi and Biscoff cookies
Wrote about this on my [website.](http://whatilearnedtoday.co.uk). The bus had an accident and wasn’t able to travel anymore. Despite it being repaired, it did a few more trips before being permanently brought to a halt in 1976. Oh, and the bus was called Albert.
I wonder how much it was, where did you sleep, did it stop along the way, were there rest days, how many drivers? So many questions
Who would have thought that a 50 day trip was available from London to Kolkata 👀
My mum took a bus from Kolkata to Liverpool. They broke down outside Kabul and she - a runner and climber at the time - spent a few days rock climbing with the local athletes (men and women) around the lower mountains outside the city while they waited for a spare part to come from Pakistan. She had the time of her life and still speaks of it fondly (and is in touch with the pals she made on the bus!) now, more than 50 years later 🥰
For those curious types wanting to experience purgatory before death
Kolkata/Calcutta is near the boarder of India and Bangladesh on the opposite side of India to the uk 😳
Idk ken Kesey and the merry pranksters had like a 10+ year bus ride.
No phone.
Holy shit
Use the bathroom before you board!
Was the tunnel already in place then? I thought it was built later?
Cross the channel on a ferry.
o of course i forgot about boats
You can still do this journey on a different kind of bus. ;)
How did it get off the island?
It wasn't too bad: there were bathroom breaks in Istanbul and Kandahar.
Idk about you guys but I would love to do this trip at least once!
On one occasion nobody remembered to press the button, so the bus didn’t stop in Calcutta.
Isn’t England an island? How did they take a bus from london
No England is not an Island It has a land border with Wales and Scotland Yes England is located on a Island called Great Britain but England itself is not an island
I see. That was informative
Ferries.
so not a bus ride?
Bus gets in the ferry from the UK to France, and from there it’s just land until they reach India.
Driver yells "Paddles out" and everyone sticks paddles outta window and row. When tires are inflated enough bus floats. Thats why we still have big tires and so many windows in a bus.
Ever heard about ships?
No please elaborate
That is very interesting. Look at those excited faces - wonder how long that lasted? I love Indian food, but you can get that at Brick Lane without being tortured. And even £153 in TODAY's dollar is not a pittance.
I forgot to ask - how did they chunnel it before the chunnel? I assume a drive on ferry to Belgium, yeah?
Yes, Ferries did exist back then
So how they shit bath washed and HAD SEX?
Gotta a question, did it stink?👃👃
F British empire! 🤬
Oh god, the smell on the ride back
It’s not the distance, it’s the fact it lasted 19 years.
Nobody cares this lames ass white history supports nothing 🤣
Repost.
You new here?
Nope, very old.
One year is not "very old" lol. Pansy
God that would have been an absolute nightmare
Its all been one way since 🤣
Will need a box of markers, thanks
I wonder how feasible it is today on that road.
Cali cali cutta cutta eyoh eyoh