This journey goes across 13 countries, and is 11,654 miles or 18,755 kilometres and takes 14 days assuming no connections are missed.
Instant win in Ticket to Ride 🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃
In 1992 my girlfriend and I took trains from Barcelona to Beijing. We went from Barcelona to Paris - Paris to Budapest - Budapest to Chop, Ukraine (railway gauge-break) - Chop to Moscow, Moscow to Zabaikalsk, Russia (railway gauge-break) - Zabaikalsk to Beijing, China. We did not fly, we did not take any buses, the trip was all on trains. It was a challenging time to take this trip because the USSR had collapsed in late 1991.
I believe the total distance of this route is around 7500 miles (12070 km). Once in China we travelled from Beijing to Lanzhou on trains which adds another 1000 miles to the trip. On most of the leg from Beijing to Lanzhou our train was pulled by a coal fired steam engine. From Lanzhou we headed south and had to rely on buses as there were no trains serving the areas we were interested in seeing.
Compared to trains in 1992, long haul buses in western China / eastern Tibet / Southwest China were a very difficult way to travel.
Unlike the the other poster who did a similar trip with his wife, we ended up getting married a few years later and remain together.
Me with ice cream at a stop somewhere in Siberia. (Notice CCCP emblem on front of train)
Street scene in Zabaikalsk while waiting for the bogeys on the train to be changed. (railway gauge-break)
Steam engine from Beijing to Lanzhou.
We continued travelling in southeast Asia for another 6 months and tried to take trains whenever possible.
I love trains.
Thats really cool but man people used to have time on their hands.
The funny thing is I can taste and smell this ice cream and my mom would tell me “no, no, this one tastes different, plombir in the Soviet Union was something different”. There’s a lot of older people longing for that ice cream that you are holding as if it could bring back youth. It’s crazy.
(I will assume that the 1992 version was still the old taste)
Wow that is an amazing comment. Better than the post itself actually, by quite the margin. On another not, the trains going from hungary to ukraine are quite strange usually. You took one from budapest, and shortly after the fall of the ussr so it was probably pretty chill actually, but nowadays they are known for being quite bizarre. Theres one that goes(or used to, i dont live in hungary anymore so i dont know how the war effected the trains) from one random town of a few thousand from the west of hungary to another random town of a few thousand in western ukraine. You can meet quite a lot of unique people on these more obscure trains.
This is so cool!
I know someone who traveled a good chunk of North America by land (~3000 miles). I thought that was crazy enough already but your trip was not only more than twice the length, but crossed wildly different countries and was done pre-smartphones.
How did you figure out the logistics? How did you know it would actually be possible?
Yes, it was an awesome trip. In fact, we were adamant about travelling overland and tried to avoid airplanes if possible.
From Lanzhou to Chengdu with various side trips we were on buses for a bit over 600 miles, Chengdu to Dali was another 600 miles. Both of these legs were done on buses and were some of the most physically demanding and dangerous road trips I have ever taken. On the Tibetan plateau most roads were gravel. We were on buses with some windows that were broken in the open position (in December - the temperature inside the bus was often well below freezing), high elevation mountain passes that were snow covered, bus drivers that always turned the engine off on descents to save fuel, no toilets on any long haul bus ever. Sometimes we would be on a bus for 16 hours with just one stop in below freezing temperatures.
From Dali we took a bus another 200 or so miles to Kunming and then got back on a train to Guangdong for another 850 miles. This actually pushes the overland travel distance of this portion of our trip to over 10,000 miles. (Barcelona - Paris - Budapest - Moscow - Beijing - Lanzhou - Xiahe - Linxia - Chengdu - Dali - Lijiang - Kunming - Guangdong - Hong Kong).
Technically some parts of our trip were not ‘possible’ and therefore logistically impossible to plan. In these cases we just bought a ticket and hoped for the best - it pretty much always worked out. For example, heading into Ukraine without a visa was not ‘possible’ but it was also not possible to get a visa to enter the country. We bought a train ticket from Budapest to Moscow and went for it. We arrived around midnight at the border into Ukraine (Chop). My girlfriend was forced to stay on the train and I was taken off the train by armed border guards with both of our passports. I was held with a few other westerners in a secure room for about 5 hours with no explanation. At around 5 in the morning we were marched through the streets of Chop to a bank where we paid in hard currency (USD or German DMs) and were issued emergency visas. We were marched back to the train and continued on to Moscow. When I got back on the train my girlfriend told me she had spent a stressful night because the train left the station shortly after I was taken off. It travelled around 5 or 6 miles to a maintenance terminal where the bogeys were all changed (rail gauge-break). There was no explanation and initially she was justifiably freaked out and wasn’t sure how we we would ever meet up again.
Emergency Ukraine visa. Visa to enter China on opposing page issued 8 days later.
In China, on some of the long haul bus trips we would stop to stay the night in towns that were not ‘approved’ for foreigners. Somehow they would find some place for us to stay. It was generally not where the local Chinese on the bus would stay. I imagine these were some undocumented locations which always seemed to be a significant walk from the bus station. It was always stressful because we had to walk back to the bus station in the morning (often at 5 or so AM) and there was always a concern we would miss the bus. In remote parts of China that were mostly inhabited by ethnic-minority groups locals had to place rocks across the road to get the buses to stop for them because the Han mentality seemed to be ‘fuck the minorities’.
Local rabbit/small game hunter boarding bus after blocking the road with rocks. Somewhere south of Linxia in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
Street scene from bus window somewhere south of Lanzhou.
Simply buying tickets in China for buses and trains was also difficult - especially in smaller towns. It took patience and resolve. There were times when we would go to the station and try to buy a ticket for the next day and were told that we couldn’t buy tickets. We would just show up again the next day and try to buy the tickets again. I think the longest it took us to get tickets for a train was 3 or 4 days - we just kept trying and eventually it would work. Due to this, there was no way to keep any sort of a schedule so logistically it was pretty complicated. Hotels were also problematic because many were not approved for ‘tourists’ so we often had to wander around looking. In some cases we would just sit in the hotel lobby after being denied accommodation until they got tired of looking at us and they would somehow find us a room.
Yep, China is quite a hard place to be a tourist.
After failing to get a train ticket we had a 12 hour bus ride once, going to Beijing. The toilet filled the whole bus with stench, only masked a little by the cigarette smoke from the chain-smokers. No opening windows. No reclining seat. Karaoke videos at full volume. Dark outside so nothing to look at yet absolutely no chance of sleep. In the end we were dropped off beside the highway at 5 AM, somewhere in the city.
Worst bus ride of my life. Purgatory.
I’ve done it, more or less - from Bangkok to Barcelona. Some busses when the trains didn’t work out. Occasional boats. One flight (Moscow to Helsinki) for visa reasons.
No one needs that much trains. The worst bit was from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow, 5 straight days and nights of birch & pine trees, eating borsht on an empty train (most people go the other direction). Not doing that again.
8 months of travel.
Things were never the same after that. Didn’t feel at home in my own country anymore, got divorced, was made redundant from my job and couldn’t afford the rent. Wandered around Asia for 5 years, aimlessly. Then covid happened and international travel was out so traveled around locally in a house bus for 3 years.
So yeah. Don’t do that trip unless you’re prepared to go well off the rails. Ho ho.
You got divorced after 8 months of travel?
The die was cast about 4 months into the trip.
My biggest regret in life is hanging on for another 18+ months to try and work it out.
Sorry but I don’t understand. You were married with a job and everything. Then decided to go on an 8 months journey to travel, while your wife (and somehow your job) waited…?
Close, but she came with me on the trip. My job waited for my return and lasted about a year-ish after we got back.
Sorry it didn’t turn out better with her, but it sounds like a huge trip. Not doing something like that is a small regret I have. It’s great that you felt confident and free enough to do it. Though, 5 years in Asia, that doesn’t sound that great tbh😀
Asia rules, that was a time that I always look back on fondly! Crazy stuff happening everywhere you look. Great food, great people, beaches, snorkeling, jungles, mountains. Too hot though.
Pretty much whatever path we choose there’s going to be some kind of regret. Humans are crappy like that :)
Sure is. Can’t do it all.
Well, that was a read ? Soinded like an awesome experience though.
that got of thr rails quickly
That’s at least 6 murders for Hercule Poirot to solve! And possibly a jewel theft or two while he’s at it!
So, we somehow need to connect Lagos with Africa to make it longer…
Building a bridge/tunnel to Morroco ain’t easy, so that’ll probably the longest for a while
Building a bridge or tunnel at the Suez canal should be easier. I wonder if the north and south of Africa are connected to by rail.
Was looking at the Malaysian East Coast Line (AKA the Malaysian Jungle Railway) , yesterday,
which forms part of this route. Fix: The West Coast Line is the one that goes to Thailand.About $10 for a sleeper, and 15hrs of jungle and village scenery. Beautiful.
Can’t pass the Thailand/Malaysia border on the train though. Need to switch to car or bus.
Yes you can! But not via east coast(Kelantan). You can get from KL Sentral(Kuala Lumpur) to Padang Besar(Perlis) to Hat Yai via KTMB’s Mysawasdee train service, then continue the journey up north via Thailand’s train.
*without backtracking
*or loops
I’m pretty confident that you could make a longer journey on train. That route looks suspiciously straight.
It’s not that straight, it goes northeast for a while, then east, then south, then southwest.
But the article defines the longest possible train journey as needing to be the shortest possible route between the start and end points. So detours don’t count as part of a journey.
Sadly this journey can’t really be completed. Kinda hard to get into Russia for most of us. And for those in Russia, kinda hard to get into the EU.
I could see myself completing parts of it separately though. Maybe the European part one summer (with day trips in some of the cities the trains stop in) and then the South-East Asian part another. Maybe also the China part before SEA if they let me into the country after all the comments I’ve made online lol, would be cool to see their high-speed rail in real life
The max-min!
But the article defines the longest possible train journey as needing to be the shortest possible route between the start and end points. So detours don’t count as part of a journey.
That makes sense, otherwise you could do all types of crazy detours to get a longer journey.
