> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%E2%80%93Calcutta_bus_se...
Really good tires, battery and passenger butts to endure such a long journey in the bus :)
> The journey took fifty days...
...so not for the working folks.
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