I have occasional need to travel from my native Eastern United States to Germany on business, but health problems make it very hard to do on a jet. My respiratory system apparently can’t handle the stress - I suppose it’s the thin dry air, or perhaps the chemicals or diseases therein, and the 8 to 10 hour duration.
What might some non-air options be? How fast do boats make this trip? Is it ridiculous to try hopping from island to island, considering that much of the great circle route is over bits of land?
AFAIK the only scheduled passenger services across the Atlantic by boat are on the Queen Mary 2 between New York and Southampton, which is not going to be cheap.
Edit: Here’s the schedule. It appears that some crossings do go directly to Hamburg in Germany, but they’re hardly frequent. Or cheap: fares from $1,949.
If lengthy, high-altitude flights are out, can you handle shorter, low-altitude flights? Most short flights don’t travel very high, especially if it’s a small plane.
It seems you could go from the US to Halifax or St. John’s in Canada (or take a bus/train/ferry(?), then possibly to Reykjavik (1700 miles from St. John’s). If that’s too far, maybe Greenland->Reykjavik (about 900 miles from both Iceland and Canada). From the other thread, there is a ferry from Iceland (to the British Isles, I think). It might still be expensive, but it’s probably shorter than going the whole way by sea, and you could take a long break after each short flight.
There may be a ‘southern route’ as well, island hopping through Bermuda and the Azores, perhaps.
It’s $1,299 cheapest rate to England. You could rent a car or take the train to Germany from there, it would be faster than paying for two more days on the ship.
The Cunard travel times are the fastest I’ve seen, looks like about 5 1/2 days transit time from New York to Southampton, England.
You might find someone who is sailing to Europe on a private boat, but I have no idea if there’s a system out there to match passengers with private boat owners or if this is even common.
With oil becoming more expensive in future years, we’re probably going to see a big increase in airfares. There may a new industry in passenger boat service across the Atlantic in the future.
If long air and sea voyages are both out, you might be able to go almost entirely overland by driving to Alaska, then getting a plane or ferry to Chukotka, then onwards to Vladivostok, and then going by rail from Vladivostok to Germany. However, I don’t know anything about the availability of commercial Alaska–Chukotka flights/ferries—you may need to charter your transport. Also, I don’t know whether there are any roads or rail lines linking Chukotka to Vladivostok. If it’s anything like the Canadian north, then there will be no permanent railways or roads; only ice roads in winter.
According to an unsourced statement on Wikipedia, there is a proposed rail link between Russia and Alaska which would go over or under the Bering Strait. However, the Bering Strait article notes that there are currently no roads on either side of the Strait, no ferries, and only occasional charter flights. Air or sea crossings would therefore have to be made farther south, between cities which have roads or railways.
Now we are getting somewhere. A few years ago I had an epiphany that you can just walk or drive most places in the world if you are really determined at it (sorry Australia). Driving around Europe/Asia/Africa can be pulled off as one tour as can N. America/S. America (you have to hike through the jungle between Panama and Colombia though).
The Bering Straight is only about 90 miles wide and it has lots of islands in it. I am not sure if Alaskan Bush pilots fly over it much or what the procedures are for it. The major kink in this part of the plan is that there is a whole bunch of Siberia nothing one you make it over to the Russian. It is freezing of course and there really aren’t any more roads. I think you would have to go by dogsled team to get into a more populated part of Russia.
After you get done with Germany, you can hike down to the Mediterranean and then do the longer pure land route into the Middle East to say hi to our troops. After that, it should be a rather easy walk down into Sub-Saharan Africa for something a little different.
Contrary to popular belief, Siberia is not perpetually frozen. Even in the far north it is warm in the (admittedly short) summer. Well, warm enough for the snow to melt, making travel by dogsled impossible.
That guy stole my idea though admittently he actually has plans to do something with it. I will be very shocked if he makes it. That Bering Strait crossing sounds incredibly dangerous if not just plain insane. The rest seems doable.
Actually, he’s already made it across the Strait. But then he was arrested by the Russian authorities for entering the country illegally. Apparently they didn’t have the foresight to install a border crossing at the most remote point of their country. :dubious:
Fortunately, they’ve released him. Unfortunately, he still had to pay a £40 fine. “Forty pounds?! Screw that! I’m going home!”
Here’s his latest update. Looks like he hasn’t been doing it in one continuous run – he’s been flying back for supplies/breaks/etc. So it looks like this might not be such a good option for you, Napier, if flying is out of the picture. Oh yeah, and spending 14 days arduously hiking across one of the most hostile environments on the planet might also be a bit stressful for your respiratory system.
If the Cunard liners are too pricey for you, you can often find “shoulder season” relocation cruises on lesser ships between the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Gotta pound the websites to do it, though.
Or you could just find a way to make the airlines work. Bring oxygen, drink lots of water, use skin lotion, whatever it takes. If the simple duration of the flight is the problem, try making the crossing on Icelandair from Boston, or even Halifax, with a layover in Reykjavik to recuperate.
While the gap is smaller than the Tasman Sea, there is at least one gap in Indonesia – the Wallace Line – that has never been walked across by humans. To reach New Guinea and Australia, humans must have had boats of some kind. In addition, unless there is another ice age (and our species is doing its best to make that unlikely), there are plenty of other unwalkable gaps between Australia and peninsular Malaysia. So Australia is in reality just as isolated as New Zealand.
Not if you’re walking: they are equally impossible. (But travelling by canoe there is a difference, and one strait was crossed by canoe or raft tens of thousands of years before the other).
