Tickets please: Portugal to Singapore by train

You can now travel by train from Portugal all the way to Singapore, according to rail blogger Mark Smith, the man behind the excellent website The Man in Seat 61. According to his estimates, the 11,654-mile journey from Lagos via Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Bangkok could be done in three weeks. The epic journey is now possible thanks to a recently completed new section of railway in Laos connecting the city of Boten with Vientiane.

The Man in Seat 61 is an excellent resource for those wanting an environmentally less damaging alternative to air travel. The site covers rail journeys within the UK and Europe as well as as the world's greatest rail journeys further afield.

Europe to India overland...

According to the Man in seat 61 website: Over the last few years, newspaper articles have raised the possibility of train travel from London to India or even Dhaka in Bangladesh, prompted by Calcutta-Dhaka trains resuming after 40 years and the completion of the final missing gap in the rails between Bam & Zahedan in southeast Iran. The Bam-Zahedan section was completed in 2008 after being 'under construction' for decades, and a passenger service allegedly started in 2012, so what with the new Marmaray train service under the Bosphorus the rails do indeed now stretch all the way from St Pancras to Karachi, Lahore, Delhi & Dhaka - give or take a ferry ride across Lake Van in eastern Turkey, that is.

However, you can't just buy a London-Delhi train ticket and hop on a train to India. Far from it...

The ethical choice

The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Over 30 years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance, breakdown cover and mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.

The Good Shopping Guide judges us to be the UK's most ethical provider.

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