If we told you that you could travel from one side of the world to another, on a bus, would you believe us? Probably not, given the current state of London public transport. While this may not be a possibility now in 2024, it sure was in 1957.
For a humble £145, the bus service also known as the ‘Hippie Route’ would travel from London through Belgium, Yugoslavia to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in India.
According to reports, the journey took about 50 days for the bus to reach Kolkata from London, spanning across 10,000 miles one way. The bus was an AEC Regal III model with ‘London to Calcutta’ displayed right across it that departed from London on April 15, 1957 and was driven by a man called Oswald-Joseph Garrow-Fisher.
This bus service was considered to be the longest bus route in the world. With the first service arriving in Calcutta on June 5, 50 days later – the bus travelled from England to Belgium and then to India through Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Western India.
The bus was better equipped than you think. Sleeping compartments, fans, music – there was more to keep the passengers comfortable during the long trip and in some cases passengers slept in hotels overnight or in some cases camped if there was no other accommodation available.
The trip was more like a tour than just a single bus journey.
Some of the stops on the tour included stunning sights like The Taj Mahal, Banaras on the Ganges, The Caspian Sea Coast, Khyber Pass to name a few with shopping days in Tehran, Salzburg, Kabul, Istanbul and Vienna.
After a good few years, the bus met with an accident and became unstable. It was later purchased by Andy Stewart, a British traveler who rebuilt it to be a ‘mobile home’ and double decker! Renamed as Albert, the double decker traveled from Sydney to London via India in 1968.
This bus route reached India via Iran and continued its journey to Singapore through Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand and Malaysia. The bus was then transported to Perth by ship from the ports of Singapore where it travelled to Sydney by road.
With the same facilities as before, the charge for this bus service was £145 as well.
Albert Tours, a company based in England and Australia, operated the London-Calcutta-London and London-Calcutta-Sydney routes for years to come completing 15 trips before discontinuing its service in 1976.
With heated political conditions leading up to the Iranian Revolution and the rising tensions between India and Pakistan, the route became too unsafe and so the service ended permanently.
Pretty crazy, right?
