It took the hero of Jules Verne’s 1873 novel ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ exactly that amount of time to circumnavigate the globe. Phileas Fogg leaves London on 21 December 1872, accompanied by his manservant Passepartout and arrives back in the British capital after what he first believes to be 81 days; but having crossed the International Date Line and thus having gained one day, Fogg still manages to win the bet – £20,000.
The bet was to prove that the completion of a new railtrack in India made it possible to travel around the Earth in four score days. The advent of air travel in the early twentieth century obviously would diminish the travel time required for such a feat – the current record for fastest circumnavigation still stands at 32 hours, 49 minutes and 3 seconds (set in 1992 by an Air France Concorde).
It’s still possible to travel around the world without airborne transportation, of course. And here also the travel times have greatly diminished since Phileas Fogg’s era. This map is a proposal for a round the world trip, only travelling by boat and train (as Fogg did), starting at and ending in New York. The trip would only take 42 days. Here’s the itinerary:
- New York – Chicago (train)
- Chicago – Seattle (train)
- Seattle – Vancouver (bus – granted, there were no buses either in Fogg’s time)
- Vancouver – Anchorage – Tokyo (boat)
- Tokyo – Osaka (train)
- Osaka – Shanghai (boat)
- Shanghai – Beijing (train)
- Beijing – Moscow (train)
- Moscow – Brussels (train)
- Brussels – London (train)
- London – New York (boat)
The longest leg of the trip would be the freighter line from Vancouver to Tokyo via Anchorage (13 days), the most expensive one would be the London to New York boat tyrip on board the Queen Mary 2 ($2,449).
In total, the trip would cost $5,312 (which converts to about £2,900 in today’s money). This map, found here on Very Small Array, an excellent map/infographic-oriented website, dates from 5 May 2005. Be warned that current prices may differ. And send a postcard.
And how long would it take following, as far as possible, Fogg’s route?
Comment by Robert W. M. Greaves — September 23, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
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Pingback by FiftyFour » 309 - Around the World at Twice the Speed of Fogg — September 23, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
Didn’t Fogg cross the Alps in a balloon? So, some minor aviation should be allowed.
A route following the original one would be more interesting anyways, one could travel around the world in seconds by walking round the Poles. (crossing the equator or just 40000km length would be good criteria..)
Comment by Chieron — September 23, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
In fact the Very Small Array blogger, web cartoonist Dorothy Gambrell, did take this overland round-the-world journey. She tersely chronicled it on the Very Small Array blog from August 8, 2006 ( http://www.verysmallarray.com/?p=64 ) through April 13, 2008 ( http://www.verysmallarray.com/?p=479 ). Each short entry is suffused with boredom and despair.
Comment by Allen Varney — September 23, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
[...] via Strange Maps] Posted by Scott Gilbertson | Category: General Related Posts: How [...]
Pingback by » Around the world in 42 days :: Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog — September 23, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
42 days?. Figures on map aren’t even close to it… about 30 days. But I might be missing some parts just basing on map.
Still sounds strange to me that today it will take longer.
Comment by Patton — September 23, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
@ Chieron: the balloon episode was an invention of the makers of the 1956 film. Since then, I believe every cinematic adaptation of the story has had some air travel. There is none of that in the novel, nor in the play by Jules Verne and Adolphe d’Ennery.
Comment by Garmt de Vries-Uiterweerd — September 23, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Funny that it’s the cheaper to get from Moscow to Brussels than from Brussels to London.
Comment by Schmierwurst — September 23, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
It seems to me the route is well above the equator, which is a significant reduction of distance.
Comment by choinski — September 23, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
Patton, I suspect that in some places the traveller had to wait for passage, since there wasn’t daily service available. I suspect the most difficult part of this to complete was the part from Alaska to Japan.
Comment by Charlene — September 23, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
@ choinski: You’re probably correct. The 45th parallel (the convenient approximate location of northern North America and Europe) has (exactly) half the circumference of the equator.
Therefore, circling at the equator would take approximately twice as long as at the 45th parallel, so Ms. Gambrell pretty much matched the speed of Mr. Fogg.
Comment by Jack — September 23, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
There is a train that runs once daily from Seattle to Vancouver (Amtrak Cascades).
Comment by Todd — September 24, 2008 @ 1:48 am
“the current record for fastest circumnavigation still stands at 32 hours, 49 minutes and 3 seconds”
That’s going to depend on how you define “circumnavigation”. If you include airplane flights, then why not spacecraft orbits? The very first Space Shuttle flight, for example, lasted 54.5 hours, during which time it orbited the earth 37 times, meaning that each “circumnavigation” took on average less than 90 minutes.
Comment by Alex — September 24, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
Why dont you take the train New York – Montreal then the train Montreal – Vancouver and thus eliminate the bus (which, like you noted, didn’t exits in Fogg’s time)? Would this make any time difference?
Comment by Rickard — September 24, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
A very minor quibble: the line between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka is called the Tokaido line. It does pass through Kyoto, but is not named that.
And the traveler could save a substantial amount on trainfare by taking the Hikari, rather than the Nozomi, train. And it would only take about 30 minutes more.
Another minor quibble: why all the detail for subway trips in NYC, but no indication of how to get from Shin-Osaka to the docks? It’s way too far to walk!
Comment by Mark B. — September 24, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
I read the book last week. Fogg’s progress was slow – for example, across America the trains went at 20 mph. Not many other speeds are mentioned, apart from on ships. I’d bet one could follow his route a lot faster today.
Comment by Laurel — September 24, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
One striking difference is that Fogg went east and this hypothetical trip goes west.
Jack, no, the ratio of the 45th parallel to the equator is the square root of 1/2; the 60th parallel is half as long. At any rate, it would be a more credible circumnavigation if the path included a pair of antipodes, such as Spain and New Zealand. (Is there a Strange Map showing the rare places where land is antipodal to land?)
Comment by Anton Sherwood — September 24, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Anton- here’s a tool to generate one:
http://www.antipodemap.com/
Comment by Dennis Brennan — September 25, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
And here’s the full map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Antipodes_LAEA.png
Comment by Dennis Brennan — September 25, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
@17 Anton: But going west is more of a challenge, the dateline gave Fogg a “cheat” ;)
Speaking of antipodes, see http://www.confluence.org/antipodes.php for antipodes where people have taken pictures of each antipode (confluence.org is a *must visit site* for any geography geek.) My favourite antipode is Formosa province, Argentina, which is, believe it or not, an antipode of Taiwan (formerly called … Formosa!) I haven’t found conclusive proof if this is intentional or not.
Comment by David Kendall — September 25, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
@ 20 David: The dateline did not give Fogg a cheat. Every time Fogg crossed into a new time zone it suddenly jumped an hour forward. When he crossed the date line he got all this “lost” time back.
Either way it still is very much a cheat to stay in the northern hemisphere the whole way through and call it a round the world trip. You might as well do a twirl in the north pole and claim to have done it in less than a second.
Comment by woscafrench — September 26, 2008 @ 4:49 am
A trip around the world without stopping over Paris or Venice, what a pity… ;)
Comment by Alexandre — September 26, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Having done a trip something like this myself (though stopping over more, and flying for the transoceanic bits), I am pretty sure that the Tokyo-Beijing segment is accomplished faster by cutting across South Korea. The shinkansen takes about 5 hours from Tokyo to Fukuoka, frequent ferries take 3 hours from Fukuoka to Busan, the KTX high speed trains get from Busan to Seoul in under 3 hours, the Weidong Ferry sails from Incheon (Seoul) to Qingdao in 17 hours, and Qingdao is 6 hours by train from Beijing. Of course this depends on getting the schedules to actually match up (rarely a problem in reality since you want to stop and see things anyway).
The trans-Mongolian Beijing-Moscow trains are faster than the trans-Manchurian by about 12 hours.
Also, hate to say it, but Greyhound is generally faster (and marginally more punctual) than Amtrak within the US, so if you’re willing to allow buses you should probably take them from New York all the way to Anchorage. If not, you can get rid of the Seattle-Vancouver one by waiting for the train the next morning, and still get to Vancouver much more quickly and cheaply than you would on Canadian trains.
Some of the fares above are quite a ways off in both directions, but that is to be expected.
Comment by lexande — September 26, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
Anton is right; Jack is wrong. It’s the 60th parallel (roughly Anchorage Alaska) that’s half the length of the equator.
Comment by ZBicyclist — September 28, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
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Pingback by In 40 Tagen um die Welt « Sprechblase — September 29, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
In fact, you can take a train from Seattle to Vancouver.
Amtrak makes this trip once a day, soon to be twice (in time for the Olympics).
Comment by Matthew — October 2, 2008 @ 12:01 am
[...] immerhin hatte er ein paar gute Ideen. Unter anderem die von der Erdumrundung in 80 Tagen. Wie man hier erfährt, hat sich vor ein paar Jahren jemand die Mühe gemacht, wie lange man in unserer [...]
Pingback by neues aus der roiberhöhle - drumherum in 42 tagen — October 2, 2008 @ 8:03 am
[...] Maps. One shows the route taken by someone going around the world but besting Phileas Fogg but 40 days. And the other one compares the population of Chinese provinces versus that of whole nations. [...]
Pingback by Links (9/3/08) « WITMOT? — October 3, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
Note that Fogg’s circumnavigation was largely a tour of the Empire, at least in the eastern hemisphere. Between France and Japan, he traveled on British steamers, and made landfall at British possessions: Suez, India, Singapore, and Hong Kong. (He skipped Shanghai, but there was a British concession at the time.)
A true circumnavigation is hard to pull off, mostly because of the difficulty in transiting Africa or South America east-west by land. You’d probably have to do it by water, like Magellan did (but with Suez and Panama to help you along).
I suggest that any itinerary that exceeds, say, 2/3 of the circumference, should qualify as a circumnavigation.
Comment by Tom — October 6, 2008 @ 2:56 am
[...] a range of subjects (click on the “next” button on the top right). Around the world in 42 days, and the art of [...]
Pingback by A different atlas, traveling around the world, and the art of mathematics. « Eduardo Angel Photography — October 23, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
I’m surprised that the G train in New York City existed back in the days. I thought it’s just an urban legend these days.
G train is a myth!!
Comment by Pak-Kei — October 30, 2008 @ 7:57 am
This is not a real circumnavigation. The distance is way short of the length of the Tropic of Capricorn. To qualify as a valid circumnavigation the total length of the trip must exceed it.
Phileas Fogg did go all the way to Singapore, just north of the Equator, so he did qualify for circumnavigation.
This trip does not go south of the Tropic line at all so it is invalid.
Comment by Pauly shore — November 20, 2008 @ 7:04 am
I recall news from some decades ago, of a family that drove a DUKW (WW2 amphibious truck) across the Atlantic Ocean. This suggests that we recognize several classes of ATW (Around The World) attempts:
1) Totally self-propelled – the voyageur walks, pedals, swims, rows, etc.
2) Totally self-contained – the voyageur drives/steers small surface vehicles.
3) Totally wind-powered – the voyageur uses only sail-cars and -boats.
4) Totally solar-powered – like #3, but with solar-electric arrays.
5) Free-form – the voyageur takes whatever commercial surface transit is available.
6) Unlimited – the voyageur launches into Low Earth Orbit. DISQUALIFIED!!
Other classes of surface circumnavigation can be based on criteria like:
a) Distance – how far can you travel around Earth’s surface in 80 days?
b) Latitude – the lower, the better.
c) Persistance – try following the equator ALL THE WAY!
d) Direction – how do East-West vs West-East vs South-North vs North-South play out?
e) Great Circle – no matter which angle, follow a Great Circle route.
We could design a number of Circumnavigation Games, eh?
Comment by RioRico — December 4, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
Hello
It is possible to travel from China to Russia Fareast ( Magadan or further north ) to USA ( Nome or Anchorage ) without flying ?
Thanks
Comment by ks choo — December 26, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Hey, try using EnTrip for your trip. Quick Pitch: EnTrip is a next-generation Map-Based TravelBlog – designed to easily and intuitively allow you to share your trip and travel experience with friends and family!
Comment by Anthony — January 14, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
If anyone else wants to try it, note that the track on the Shanghai-Beijing express has been upgraded, shaving 5 hours off the travel time. Insignificant in a circumnavigation, but…
Also, it would have been closer to a real circumnavigation to sail to HK and take a train from there into China (HK-Beijing is 24 hours, track has not been upgraded yet).
Comment by jamar — January 25, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
thanks for this map
good
luck
….
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 9:03 am
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 5:27 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 7:51 am