In three hours of extensive enthusiasm, Kodhi and me have come up with what we think is the greatest travel route ever. I decided that it would be cool to travel overland from the Pacific coast of Asia to the Atlantic Coast of Europe. In a stroke of genius, Kodhi decided that it would be even cooler to travel back to the Pacific coast once the Atlantic coast had been reached, with the additional rule that you couldn’t visit any of the same cities. We came up with the following route, which (I repeat myself here) is the greatest ever (except that we couldn’t fit in Ulaan Bataar). For your viewing pleasure, here it is:
Hong Kong – Beijing West
Beijing – Urumqi
Urumqi – Almaty
Almaty – Tashkent
Tashkent – Samarkand – Bukhara – Nukus
Nukus – Turkmenistan (border crossing) – Ashgabat
Ashgabat – Merv
Merv – Mashhad (border crossing)
Mashhad – Yazd – Shiraz – Esfahan – Tehran
Tehran – Tabriz – Istanbul
Istanbul – Sofia – Belgrade
Belgrade – Sarajevo – Zagreb – Ljublubna – Venice
Venice – San Marino – Naples – Rome – Florence – Genoa – Milan
Milan – Ventimegla – Monaco – Nice
Nice – Perpignan – Barcelona
Barcelona – Valencia – Sevilla
Sevilla – Faro
Faro – Lisbon – Porto
Porto – Vigo
Vigo – Madrid – Bilbao – San Sebastian
San Sebastian – Bordeaux – Nantes – Paris – Lille – Brussels – Antwerp – Rotterdam – Den Hague – Amsterdam
Amsterdam – Koln – Bremen – Hamburg – Berlin
Berlin – Prague – Vienna – Bratislava – Budapest – Krakow – Warsaw
Warsaw – Minsk – Vilinius – Riga – Tallinn – St. Petersburg – Moscow – Vladivostok
This will take 13 visas (I counted) and cover about twenty or thirty countries (I didn’t count). Porto is basically journey’s end on the first leg of the trip since that’s where Vasco Da Gama started from. The trip starts with the trans-Chinese railroad and ends with the trans-Siberian railroad.
Since Kodhi and me are poor FMCG traveling salesman and retail broker in the midst of a financial crisis, and we don’t have the coolth that Popagandhi has to just pick ourselves up and start traveling, please contribute generously so that we can quit our jobs and undertake this trip. We will be very grateful for this act of kindness.
Posted by Aadisht