{"id":2237,"date":"2017-11-18T11:03:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T09:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2237"},"modified":"2017-11-19T16:47:08","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T14:47:08","slug":"the-roads-to-singapore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2237","title":{"rendered":"The Road(s) To Singapore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PathRecently a number of us trundled off to Singapore<\/a> to attend the 100th Internet Engineering Task Force<\/a> meeting, during which we shared our ideas on how to improve the Internet.\u00a0 But precisely how<\/strong> did we all get there?\u00a0 Why, by plane of course!\u00a0 In the case of yours truly, I went from Switzerland<\/a> by way of Bangalore<\/a>, India.\u00a0 These are long flights: the short haul from Bangalore was four hours and twenty minutes.\u00a0 The non-stop return flight was just over twelve hours, thanks to favorable winds.<\/p>\n

But what if you wanted to drive<\/strong>?\u00a0 After all, instead of flying from San Francisco to Las Vegas, I drove; and I very much enjoyed the scenery.\u00a0 What would it take to get all the way to Singapore by car?\u00a0 Is it even possible?\u00a0 A little check on the map shows that it should theoretically<\/strong> be possible to travel the distance by land, with the occasional bridge crossing here and there.\u00a0 How would one even begin to plan such a trip?\u00a0 Well, for me it would be with everyone\u2019s favorite navigation tool: Google Maps.\u00a0 We start there.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

There\u2019s that inviting \u201cDirections\u201d button.\u00a0 If I just click it, I’m hoping that it will show me a few alternative routes, and a driving time.\u00a0 Of course it will indicate the tolls and the fact that we are crossing borders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"No<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the invitation was quickly rescinded.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What’s the problem?\u00a0 Well, like a good computer scientist I began to bisect the route to see if I could determine where Google thought there was no route.\u00a0 I figured, ok let\u2019s see if I can get to India from Switzerland.\u00a0 I got the same answer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But when I asked if I could get to Lahore<\/a>, things began to improve.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That would be an eighty six hour route, covering 7,734 kilometers.\u00a0 There’s only one problem: it would take me straight through the heart of Iran<\/a>, and I very much doubt I could get a transit visa for this purpose.\u00a0 But now at least we have a route to Lahore.\u00a0 A little dragging and dropping in Google Maps shows that with a mere six hour detour, one can go over the Black and Caspian seas, instead of under them, as such:<\/p>\n

\"Wetzikon<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, very good!\u00a0 We’ve gotten ourselves half way there.\u00a0 To do so, we travel through Germany<\/a>, Czechia<\/a>, Poland<\/a>, The Ukraine<\/a>, Russia<\/a>, Kazakhstan<\/a>, Uzbekistan<\/a>,\u00a0 Afghanistan<\/a>, and finally into Pakistan<\/a>.\u00a0 Right about now, Iran is beginning to sound pretty good, by the way.\u00a0 An airplane more so.\u00a0 Consider this little factoid: the route takes us through Eastern Ukraine which right now is not exactly being friendly with the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

It turns out that one can<\/strong> in fact cross the Pakistan\/India border with a car at Lahore if one has all the right paperwork.\u00a0 One enters by the city of Amristar<\/a>.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s see if we can get from Amristar to Singapore.\u00a0 Surely enough, one can!<\/p>\n

\"Amristar<\/p>\n

That’s another 105 hours or 6,404 kilometers.\u00a0 One travels across India, avoiding both Bangladesh<\/a> and Bhutan<\/a>.\u00a0 While it is probably possible to drive into Bangladesh, Bhutan is virtually impossible to enter without serious amounts of paperwork.\u00a0 Of course, this whole trip would require serious amounts of paperwork, but Bhutan would require its own stack.\u00a0 One can do this because the Indian states of Assam and Manipur juts quite far to the east.<\/p>\n

For those keeping score, this route is just under 14,000 kilometers, and would take, if driven straight, ignoring traffic (hah!), about 200 hours.\u00a0 That would be about 25 days, if one limits one’s driving\u00a0 to eight hours per day.\u00a0 The route changes based on which citizenship one holds, to be sure.\u00a0 Many countries would require visas, and car permits.\u00a0 One challenge that one has to consider is that this is the most direct route, according to Google Maps.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the easiest<\/strong> route.\u00a0 For one thing, many of the directions themselves, are written out by Google in the local script.\u00a0 For the Ukraine, that means Cyrillic.\u00a0 For Myanmar, that\u2019s Burmese.\u00a0 Of course, this says nothing of the languages themselves, nor whether anyone would accept Mastercard.\u00a0 Hotels?\u00a0 There may be inns along the route.\u00a0 Google is pretty good at spotting these and<\/strong> (perhaps more importantly) gas stations.<\/p>\n

Having performed the exercise, I think it would be fun to do parts<\/strong> of this route.\u00a0 In particular, traveling in north-western India and into Myanmar seems interesting.\u00a0 I wonder what Hertz<\/a> would say.\u00a0 Apart from the collision damage waver, and all other insurance, I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019d want a very simple vehicle that could be easily repaired and could handle varying qualities of gasoline.\u00a0 An old Range Rover<\/a> with an extra tank might be a good deal.\u00a0 Probably not the trip to take a Tesla<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To play around with this route, have a look at the\u00a0 Google map<\/a>.\u00a0 Be sure to expand out the directions.\u00a0 Note the occasional U-Turn one is required to make.<\/p>\n

Some final geographical points: this trip, while long, roughly follows the great circle route, and so it\u2019s fairly optimal, from a distance standpoint.\u00a0 It is also probably the farthest south one can travel from Europe or Asia without taking a ferry.\u00a0 Assuming one can travel it at all.\u00a0 With ferries, it may be possible to get as far as Timur, but I haven’t checked that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I travelled by air to Singapore. But what if one wanted to go from Europe by car?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[573,572,181],"class_list":["post-2237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-maps","tag-routes","tag-singapore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2237"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}