How far can one travel without getting in an plane?

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Seat61.com has a lot of detail on how to get around Europe by train, as well as some information on other places, but I wonder if the site is missing anything key, such as any other ways of getting across the Atlantic or Pacific that doesn't involve taking a re-positioning cruise or getting on a cruise ship then abandoning it closest to where you want to go. I'd be surprised if there for instance really were no way to get to Iceland from either eastern Canada or even parts of Greenland. I understand that air travel is the most popular and almost always the fastest way to go, but what about for the folks who either fear flying for whatever reason, want to try cut down on their carbon footprint, or simply like to spend some time in the places they will pass through and/or enjoy a journey and see it as much an experience as the destination itself?

So, anyone here veterans of non-air travel and wish to write about their experiences of travelling or at least attempting to travel long distances without taking a plane?

I personally live in the north-east of the US and know one could take long-distance trains or buses (or even local transit services! - www.megaloping.com) to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then a bus and ferry to western Newfoundland then another bus to St. John's in the east, but that's about as far as you can go because nothing else runs east of there that doesn't fly anyway. One could go north by ferry to Labrador then take buses or drive if you have a car up there but I don't think you can get to Greenland from there. I guess even though some routes may be physically possible even if it were only at certain times of the year, they aren't available due to lack of profit ability.

Some time ago I was reading up on various ways to travel sort of cheaply, and if I remember correctly there was some info on people who managed to book a room on some kind of merchant or container/shipping vessel or something like that. I could imagine that if you don't mind the relatively cramped spaces and perhaps the slow travel, that it could be an option. Unfortunately I don't have a clue if this sort of thing is even available at this time, as I'm not sure if economic conditions would still be conducive to travel like this. Might be something worth investigating if you're really adamant about not taking a plane.

At the moment there are no regularly-scheduled ferries between Greenland and well, anything outside of Greenland.

Good luck! It'll be an interesting trip to say the least, and I definitely agree that traveling can be at least as much about the journey as the destination itself.

I'm willing to drive up to 8 hours or so: Oregon, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia. Anything further and I fly.

Been from North Carolina to California several times (different routes) with kid and dog and back and from Michigna to California and back once with kids. You know what they say, "Getting there is half the fun!" Unfortunately, some people are not interested in a road trip. My goal is to see the states i have not and then travel Europe or Canada when i am done with the US.

I have been all around the US via auto and rail.

FWIW, You can travel practically from the UK to Vladivostok, as well as more southerly asian destinations via rail.

I suppose if you were really determined, you could take a smaller boat across the Atlantic - don't think I'd try that on the Pacific, though...

Yeah I heard of this guy who did it with a boat he had for some competition that took just under 3 days to cross. If anything regular were available that ran year-round, I'd go for that. Sure there is Cunard Lines in the summer but they're basically a luxury cruise line with equivalent dress code and they run only once a month each way. Way too limited for transportation purposes.

I live in Europe and me and my husband use to travel around the area by train only. It use to takes us days to get to our destinations but we dont mind it and you get to see other places on the way. Yeah its both cheaper and faster to fly but we are trainpeople. In fact my husband is on a second round this year at this very moment. He have visited 7 countries by now...

Michael Palin did a mini series that I saw on Public Television about his trip around the world without flying. It was very entertaining. Maybe the video is available (or at least youtube?)

Travel without flying? I don't know that you can.

As recently as the 1960's most travel to and from Australia was by ocean liners. P&O ran ships between Australia, Asia, America and Europe.

Today there are no passenger ships on those routes or any other.

Today it is either fly or stay on your home continent.

Right, but have you heard of the possibility of a maglev-style train being operated in a vacuum tunnel, allowing the possibility to travel thousand sof kilometres/hour? The concept had been recently mentioned in Extreme Engineering and I think that with the willpower, we could make such a project work. If we can put a person on the moon, we can SO build this thing. I'd bet the cost of developing such a thing that could get people between distant places wouldn't be as high as one may think but I can probably make a safe bet that the airline & oil industries are doing the best they can to stop innovation at all costs - even if it means stopping any real progress that even they could benefit from in the long run.

Actually, one CAN book passage on merchant/freighter ships. I understand that it is a very structured and spartan way to travel, but there are those who swear by it. Apparently there is a lot of solitude and personal time along the way, too.

Mike

I saw prices for that before and sometimes travelling that way can be more expensive than medium-level luxury cruising. I think the cheapest way these days is Cunard if the dates match to your plans and you can book it far ahead enough. Within either side of the Atlantic of course, it's not difficult to get to places without flying.

If you're also excluding sea travel, if you're in North America, you can travel from Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, or mainland Nunavut, to at least the Panama Canal. If you can drive across it, you can travel to either Ushuaia, Argentina or Punta Arenas, Chile entirely by car.

Also, you could travel from Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, or Great Britain (via the English Channel Tunnel) through Mainland Europe, and through either Russia/Siberia or Turkey and the Middle East, and travel across either Asia or Africa.

In either case, a 4-wheel drive vehicle is recommended for some areas, which may have dirt roads, or lots of ice and snow. Depending on the political conditions and war legacies of some areas, one may also have to watch out for land mines.

My memory might be failing me, but I don't think there is a bridge linking Tierra del Fuego and mainland Chile/Argentina, so Punta Arenas yes, Ushuaia no.
Also I think there is no road connection between Panama and Colombia. I assume this to be the case since the Pan American Highway has a known gap in this region, plus I couldn't find any roads looking on Google Maps (which could be incomplete there).

I didn't know that. I do know that the segment of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Laredo, Texas, is the U.S. portion of the Pan-American Highway