A post in another thread got me wondering about the highway between eastern and western Russia. It turns out that there is a road, but not a very good one! This Wikipedia article gives a good basic description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Highway
I also found a terrific National Geographic account of a guy who hitchhiked from Vladivostok to Moscow. It's a great read: http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/trans-siberian-highway/mckenzie-funk-text
Looking at a map, it appears that there is a more southerly route across Kazakhstan and China. I wonder if those roads are any better!
I'd love to take a road trip from the northern tip of Scotland to the far east edge of Russia someday.
There have been a few rallies between Bejing and points west (Paris, London). I saw one on TV that happened in 1997. There was a considerable lack of paved roads in deep rural Tibet and across Pakistan and India.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/motorsports/1269066.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_to_Paris
http://www.pekingparis.com/
The best roads are via the northern route, that is Russia and Kazakhstan. Getting into Tibet may be hard to impossible these days. Another issue are serious safety-problems in southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan (Baluchistan area). Both the Iranian and Pakistani government barely control that area. I have read you can only travel there with armed convoys.
Quote from: Chris on January 22, 2010, 02:36:17 PM
The best roads are via the northern route, that is Russia and Kazakhstan. Getting into Tibet may be hard to impossible these days. Another issue are serious safety-problems in southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan (Baluchistan area). Both the Iranian and Pakistani government barely control that area. I have read you can only travel there with armed convoys.
The Trans-Siberian "highway" goes even farther north than that, although it looks to be a tough road at times.
Whenever it rains, right?
That said, is E40 the longest signed route out there?
The entire route to Vladivostok is now paved. The worst routes are to the northeast, towards Magadan, those are all-weather roads that become impassable when it gets above freezing for the first week or so.
I doubt if E40 is continuously signed, especially in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is 8,000 kilometers long, but takes an weird road through Kazakhstan.
That said, I have seen Kazakhstani trucks in the Netherlands.
I was just doing some calculation, unfortunately, Google Maps doesn't work in Russia, but it does work in Kazakhstan. The Chinese border is about 6,600 kilometers driving from the Netherlands, and requires only 4 difficult borders; into Ukraine, into Russia, into Kazakhstan and finally into China.
via the Kiev - Tambov - Penza - Samara - Uralsk - Shymkent - Almaty route.
It may be somewhat shorter to stay a little longer in Russia and enter Kazakhstan at Troitsk, and travel via Karagandy towards the Chinese border.
The first route requires 3,000 kilometers through Kazakhstan, or nearly 50% of the entire trip. The second route requires more Russia, but less Kazakhstan: 2,000 kilometers.
Ukraine wouldn't be much of a problem, they don't even require visas anymore. Russia would be most problematic, I heard of many traffic stops by the police who want some bribes, especially further east. I'm not sure about Kazakhstan. Presumably, the roads are okay if you have the winter and first thaw-cycle behind you. Still, the Kazakhstan steppes are very expansive, and a cross-country trip through Kazakhstan would be almost like a coast-to-coast trip in the U.S., only this country has a population of like 16 million.
Hmm, I just realized, it's much further north as the crow flies. If you take the northern route via Moscow, Kazan and Chelyabinsk, it's about 6,100 kilometers. This requires more Russia, but also more 4-lane roads.
There are two options; via Belarus or a route that's slightly more to the north, via Lithuania and Latvia. The latter requires even less borders; only the Russian, Kazakhstan and Chinese border.
I'm finding that Bing's the best map to use for following E-routes through Russia. OpenSourceMaps doesn't show the E-routes overlaid, annoyingly, nor is OSM's coverage of Ukraine complete.
On the otherhand, I was amused by Bing's mistranslation of Lugansk, Ukraine as Luhansk...
Edit: All bets are off for Kazakhstan, though...
Quote from: Bickendan on January 30, 2010, 01:07:28 AM
On the otherhand, I was amused by Bing's mistranslation of Lugansk, Ukraine as Luhansk...
It's that confusing Russian vs Ukrainian translations. Eastern Ukraine has a majority of Russian speakers. The difference between Ukrainian and Russian is not that big, but there are some differences in spelling like Kharkiv vs Kharkov, Luhansk vs Lugansk, Zaporizhzhya vs Zaporozh'ye, Chernihiv vs Chernogov, Lviv vs L'vov, etc.