A very different scale, but this reminded of the Green Tortoise which was an American, mostly West Coast affair that once ranged from Alaska to Belize.
> Green Tortoise Adventure Travel is an American long-distance tour bus company
> is
I usually find Wikipedia to be quite accurate when it comes to telling whether something is still operational/active or not, especially when it comes to businesses (among other things).
I actually can't find any evidence that there ever existed a direct Anchorage-Belize trip. The parent comment implies that the company merely offered routes that extended to these destinations, but not necessarily as a single trip.
Most of Anchorage to Belize would be within two or three countries: USA, Canada and Mexico, and two main official languages English and Spanish. (Obviously numerous indigenous minority languages.) London to Calcutta would have been much more diverse, but even within the Indian leg you would encountered more languages...
I did too - did the SF back to NYC leg that goes the north route as well. Amazing experience. I was only 19 at the time. My favorite memory is that on the westbound leg we met up with the eastbound one in (I think) Yellowstone and while parking the buses they managed to slowly crash in to each other (just a dent, nothing serious). I liked the fact they both started from separate coasts and ending up colliding.
The template references a site which uses the Retail Price Index[1] (even though it says it uses the Consumer Price Index?), Bank of England uses the Consumer Price Index. Over such a long period a difference of 30% doesn't seem that much.
These are photos of the Indiaman service, operated by Garrow-Fisher starting in 1957. The Wikipedia article conflates details of this service with another one, the Albert, operated by Albert Travel, which started in 1968. I noticed the discrepancy because the photos are of a single-decker bus, not a double-decker.
My grandmother took 2 or 3 of her kids, on her own, on the train from London to southern Italy a couple of times a year with the same kind of stoicism as people take the bus into town these days. They were built different
My mother took us(four kids) on the train from CA to FL (and back) a couple times.
It is a fond memory now, but looking back on it, A 3-day (most of it in Texas) 2000 mile journey with four children in coach.... The woman was a saint.
50 days one way? Some research shows it was £85 vs. £200-£400 for a one-way plane ticket. What is the use case for this?
I guess:
- very motivated to go
- plan to stay for a very long time
- absolutely CANNOT afford a plane ticket
- or, afraid of flying
Reminds me of a lot of Amtrack routes in the US. I looked at trips from NYC to Chicago. I thought it would be fun and I needed to get to Chicago. But it was more expensive than flying and like 25 hours. There is just absolutely no reason to travel that way.
Exactly. For many, the idea of being able to see England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in one 50 day trip with many similar minded travelers who aren't in a rush is really quite appealing.
Also, with bus travel you could, if you felt like it, leave the trip to enjoy many more local attractions and resume your travels later in a way not afforded by airplane or rail travel.
I have friends that take the long haul Amtrak route. One does it for environmental reasons. He also eats discarded food so as not to waste. Great guy. Just a bit of a nut.
Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.
But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.
I just took the Amtrak from Southern California to Seattle.
Pros:
- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)
- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar
- Spectacular views
- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports
- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.
Cons:
- 32 hours of travel
- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat
Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.
For long distance trains, sure. But there’s plenty of shorter Amtrak routes outside of the NE Corridor where it could make as much or more sense than flying, to be fair
Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.
I did NY to Miami in 2024, I was working in NY one week and Miami the next, made sense to me to have Sat morning down town in New York, then sit in a private hotel room with great food for 24 hours before arriving in New York Sunday evening in time for work the following day.
Could have flown Saturday evening and had an extra day in a hotel room in Miami instead, but I spend enough time in chain hotels
Eh, the Portland - Seattle - Vancouver BC Amtrak sector is also pretty usable. In practice I've found it's not substantially faster or slower than driving - at least not enough to make a big difference for me.
You definitely don’t take long distance Amtrak today for cost or convenience. You go for the experience and views. I had a blast sharing a room with a friend on the Seattle to Emeryville route. I’m looking at Chicago to Emeryville next (or starting in Denver along the same route).
The Wikipedia article made it sound like more of a "land cruise". The bus stopped at some tourist and shopping destinations along the way and the description make it sound more like a cabin cruiser than your typical bus. I can see the appeal for people who want to travel and don't have a lot of money. Definitely easier than hitchhiking across the continent.
For the most part, the purpose of the long haul Amtrak services isn't to make it economical go from one end of the line / one major city to the other (e.g. NYC to Chicago); It's to provide a transportation service for all the intermediate, rural stations who might not be near an airport or have any other public transportation options.
Can't believe you tried so hard to list reasons for taking the route, and missed an obvious one that other commenters suggested. Travel is not always just A->B as fast as possible.
This is HN, a place where people see dot A and people see dot B but they fail to connect the dots. Reminds me of HN's underwhelming reaction to Dropbox.
One would think that travelling across so many countries and continents would be quite clearly the point of the bus service.
Road is the destination, thus you arrive a changed man, ready for the Indian sub-universe to experience and mold you further.
And specifically on this, clashing with a very exotic cultures and mindsets along the way, forming unexpected intense interactions and experiences that you will remember for the rest of your life.
I've done a similar thing to this since this specifically wasn't possible anymore without crossing battlefields and risking kidnapping and death - backpacking around India for 6 months together. No real destination or plan, just 1 thick Lonely planet book covering whole country in the backpack (this was 2008 and 2010), return ticket and fixed budget in cash.
Came back a bit different, dare I say in some ways enlightened person. Experience cannot be explained to others by mere words, but other folks who experienced similar understand without a word.
I took the Amtrak from Chicago to SF and it was the highlight of that year for me and one of the best memories of my life. Eating breakfast as we snaked by the Colorado river with fresh snow on the rocks - that's a travel experience.
The equivalent of this would be interrailing through europe... travel via train to one country, stay for a few days, travel to next, stay a few days, and continue, all with a single ticket: https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/global-pass
The same reason why people take month long road trips anywhere, it's to see everything on the way. I'd guess their clients were 20 year olds wanting to go on an adventure. Honestly, if this had been a thing when I was 21 and out of college and a friend asked me to go I probably would have.
I once took Amtrack from Chicago-Seattle-San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Antonio-Chicago. With side-trips to Madison WI, Vancouver and to Yosemite (via Green Tortoise company).
It was a 6 week vacation, the purpose was to travel and see the US. I enjoyed it very much!
I’m surprised you’ve missed the most important reason of all. The very journey and the time spent on it is the point I would imagine for a large majority of the folks. It’s an adventure. What sort of person misses this?
Depends on the type of tourism you prefer, I absolutely love roadtrips because "journey is more important than the destination", it's an adventure and the best memories from trips I have are from the journey itself, the destination is just a cherry on top.
Judging by the facilities mentioned in the Wikipedia article, it was very much planned as a (relatively) modern-day Orient Express. Not everyone back then had the luxury to not work for 50 days (one-way), so it was very much a rich people service.
iirc it was more doing it for the experience than as a convenient mode of travel (and actually if you run the maths/do some estimation, the journey time would be much shorter if they were driving 24/7 - like 5-10 days maybe)
Really, more expensive than flying? The family and I are looking at taking a X-country trip on AMTRAK and it looks to be significantly cheaper than flying. Plus, we will get to see awesome sights.
You lucked out. I periodically have entertained the idea of a long train trip with the family, and it has invariably been a good bit more expensive than just flying. The only time it is even close is on short (say a few hundred miles) trips.
A sidenote about this cross-continental trip. Dervla Murphy's book Full Tilt is really good. It talks about her crazy bicycle journey in the middle of winter from Ireland to India. Rest of her books are great as well, but this one is my favorite.
Last year I took buses from Lima to Rio de Janeiro (not one bus, but a long trip, all by bus). In total, 3,800 miles. I've been meaning to maybe write blog post with the details (exact costs and times, etc).
For me, trains are much preferable to buses and buses much, much preferable to flying. I guess I just like to look about the window and see everything between points A and B.
there is a DW channel documentary about Transoceânica (Rio to Lima ) the longest bus route, which I just watched last week. It is 5 episodes but well made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ODFlqURxY
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Tortoise
edit: oh wow. It still runs!
http://www.greentortoise.com/
> is
I usually find Wikipedia to be quite accurate when it comes to telling whether something is still operational/active or not, especially when it comes to businesses (among other things).
Anchorage to Belize: 5777 miles
London to Kolkata: 5695 miles
Oof that really puts inflation into perspective doesn’t it?
So it's not just inflation, it's "that used to be cheaper".
I guess on the flipside, travelling by plane in 1957 (or even 1974), would have been much more than £2,589.
Not to mention a lot more dangerous.
> What cost £85.00 in 1957 would cost £1,796.12 in November 2025.
Not orders of magnitude off, but makes a little more sense this way. I wonder if there's a bug in wikipedia's inflation calculator.
[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Inflation/UK/dataset
Someone found some photos on Shutterstock:
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/london-to-calc...
See here for much better Wikipedia article that keeps the details straight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_b...
London–Calcutta Bus Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40649091 - June 2024 (117 comments)
The past really is a foreign country sometimes.
My grandmother took 2 or 3 of her kids, on her own, on the train from London to southern Italy a couple of times a year with the same kind of stoicism as people take the bus into town these days. They were built different
It is a fond memory now, but looking back on it, A 3-day (most of it in Texas) 2000 mile journey with four children in coach.... The woman was a saint.
I guess:
- very motivated to go
- plan to stay for a very long time
- absolutely CANNOT afford a plane ticket
- or, afraid of flying
Reminds me of a lot of Amtrack routes in the US. I looked at trips from NYC to Chicago. I thought it would be fun and I needed to get to Chicago. But it was more expensive than flying and like 25 hours. There is just absolutely no reason to travel that way.
I can't say it would have been very comfortable, so I guess it would be trading time and comfort for money.
Also, with bus travel you could, if you felt like it, leave the trip to enjoy many more local attractions and resume your travels later in a way not afforded by airplane or rail travel.
Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.
But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.
Pros:
- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)
- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar
- Spectacular views
- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports
- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.
Cons:
- 32 hours of travel
- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat
Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.
Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.
Could have flown Saturday evening and had an extra day in a hotel room in Miami instead, but I spend enough time in chain hotels
If I had 50 days to spare I might choose that over a flight too!
One would think that travelling across so many countries and continents would be quite clearly the point of the bus service.
And specifically on this, clashing with a very exotic cultures and mindsets along the way, forming unexpected intense interactions and experiences that you will remember for the rest of your life.
I've done a similar thing to this since this specifically wasn't possible anymore without crossing battlefields and risking kidnapping and death - backpacking around India for 6 months together. No real destination or plan, just 1 thick Lonely planet book covering whole country in the backpack (this was 2008 and 2010), return ticket and fixed budget in cash.
Came back a bit different, dare I say in some ways enlightened person. Experience cannot be explained to others by mere words, but other folks who experienced similar understand without a word.
When I take Amtrak, it’s because I want to look out of a window for a few dozen hours and see something new (to me) every time I look out the window.
It’s probably the bus trip that they want, and not simply “go to India.”
Some people liked to see all these places and meet people. The journey itself would be an adventure. The other alternative would be by sea.
I used to know someone who travelled to India overland long before the Beatles made it fashionable for westerners to visit.
The equivalent of this would be interrailing through europe... travel via train to one country, stay for a few days, travel to next, stay a few days, and continue, all with a single ticket: https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/global-pass
It was a 6 week vacation, the purpose was to travel and see the US. I enjoyed it very much!
> became famously associated with the overland Hippie Trail of the 1960s and 1970s
Dead Comment
Fits the hippie age quite well.
Deleted Comment
[1] https://xcancel.com/Indianmemory/status/1277521026813882368#...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/163921.Full_Tilt
Last year I took buses from Lima to Rio de Janeiro (not one bus, but a long trip, all by bus). In total, 3,800 miles. I've been meaning to maybe write blog post with the details (exact costs and times, etc).
For me, trains are much preferable to buses and buses much, much preferable to flying. I guess I just like to look about the window and see everything between points A and B.