And also vice versa - are there border crossings where ID might in theory be required, but practically speaking is routinely not checked.
I proposed the great circle distance to exclude things like travelling in a circle or spiral. Colophon is probably correct that the answer is to sail between two antipodean islands. But in retrospect that’s kind of boring.
What I had in mind is fictional stories where our hero, off the grid and with no papers, travels undetected to Moscow or London or wherever the plot requires. So I was thinking of things like the Shengen agreement; or places where there might be lax or nonexistent border controls.
Are there still unguarded crossings from Canada to the USA? Can you charter a boat and sail from San Diego to Mexico, or are there officials waiting on the docks? Fly a light plane between unattended airfields? How far south can you get? Let’s assume you have a legal right to be there, and you’re not using false documents, climbing fences or landing on the beach at night. Just taking the least documented route.
Are there routes that will get you from Russia to Europe without a passport? If so Vladivostok to Lisbon is 10,000 km. Northern Canada to Cape Horn is 14,000 km or so, though far less plausible.
Are there any countries anywhere in the world, other than the Schengen countries, that literally do not require any sort of ID to enter and whether or not you need to show ID in a practical sense depends on the border guard (e.g. the law doesn’t require any sort of documents, but the border guard has discretion to inspect you and is practically more likely to pass you quickly if you have ID)? Are there countries where you are de jure allowed to enter without checking in with border authorities unless border authorities preemptively stop you, meaning that you could, in theory, make a mad dash across the mountains, braving lions, bandits, and the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka in order to make it across before some border guard sees you and decides to exercise his “discretion” and require ID or else he’ll find some way to deport you on a technicality? Possibly some third world country or something? Maybe some country that didn’t update their laws when passports and photo id’s became common?
Whenever I’ve travelled between shengen countries by plane and train, I’ve had to provide ID. It’s probably easier by car, but I’m not sure you could count on never being asked for ID, especially since then you need a driving licence anyway.
A couple of years ago I travelled from the UK to Croatia by train (and ferry for the first part), via Amsterdam, Prague and Budapest. I had to show my passport to get on the ferry to Holland (the UK not being part of the Schengen area), but after that I don’t recall having to show it again until we got to the border between Hungary and Croatia.
In fact I mostly took overnight trains, so for example I’d get on the train in Amsterdam in the evening and arrive in Prague early the next morning, having passed from Holland, through Germany, into the Czech Republic overnight. No disturbance from border guards. Same thing with Prague to Budapest, passing through Slovakia into Hungary. The Hungary/Croatia border was the first one where the train stopped and border guards got on.
Not at all advisable to try. The Iron Curtain may be no more, but the external border of the EU (i.e. the eastern borders of the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Romania etc) is pretty heavily secured these days. You can see the fences and patrol roads on Google Maps pretty clearly.
Also in pre-EU/pre-Schengen days there was no ID needed to travel between Switzerland and Liechtenstein; and Ibetween Italy and the microstates it contains (Vatican and San Marino); and from France to Monaco.
Also in pre-EU/pre-Schengen days there was no ID needed to travel between Switzerland and Liechtenstein; and Ibetween Italy and the microstates it contains (Vatican and San Marino); and from France to Monaco.
You don’t need a passport to travel between the UK and Ireland either.
I remember doing some over-night train journeys pre-Schengen. The guard on the train took the passports late at night, before the border crossing, on a couple of occasions. Austria to Italy, definitely, and I think also Italy into Switzerland. I’m pretty sure nobody checked France to the Netherlands, or the Netherlands to Germany.
A French citizen doesn’t need a passport to go to New Caledonia or Wallis and Futuna. But I assume you’d be required to show an ID as proof of citizenship upon arrival. And the OP required that you didn’t have to show any.
I assume that would be true for any oversea territory (Hawai, Aruba, etc…)
What happens if a French person flies in their own private aircraft from France to New Caledonia without a passport or any proof of citizenship? I guess that they would be detained until French citizenship were established, at which point they would be set free. If that is correct, then we could say that a French person doesn’t absolutely need any official documentation to make that journey.
(Ok, they might get into trouble for viloating aviation rules or something, but that’s a separate question. We can make it that they sailed to New Caledonia, or swam the whole way.)
It’s not true for Hawaii and I believe it isn’t true for Aruba either. Flying from the US to Hawaii or from the Netherlands to Aruba is a domestic flight-- you need to show your ID as required by the airline, but you don’t go need it to prove citizenship because you’re not actually crossing an international border. The assumption is that you’re in the mainland legally, in which case you’re legal on the islands too.
From what I can tell, the French overseas territories aren’t like Hawaii and Aruba, where people can freely travel and work between the islands and the mother country. For example, apparently French and other EU citizens can only stay for three months without a visa and would need a work visa (and I presume, more to the point, an inhabitant of the territory would need a work visa to move to or work in France). The Air Tahiti page says French citizens need an ID, but doesn’t say if that’s for entry or just because you need it to get on the plane (or if you’d just need to carry it anyways).
In the interests of fighting ignorance, you should fly to Tahiti and report back.