This week's talking point touches on the topic of alternative travel. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below, so that ideas flow more easily when you get together with your friends and you can work out some vocabulary problems beforehand.
Have you ever been on a long journey? Can you describe the experience?
What's the most unusual holiday you have ever had?
What was different about it?
Do you think travel can broaden your horizons? How?
What is the difference between a tourist and a traveller?
Would you like to travel around the world? Why (not)?
If so, would you like to travel by motorbike?
What do you think the advantages and disadvantages of this trip would be?
Which of the following travel options most/least appeal to you:
Alternating Travel: Leave your home/hotel on foot. Take the first road on the right, then the next on the left, then the next on the right, and so on.
Ero Tourism: Arrange to take a holiday with your loved one. Travel there separately by different means and don't arrange a meeting time or place. Then look for each other.
Blind Man's Bluff Travel: Spend 24 hours blindfolded in a new location with a friend to guide you.
Slight-hitch Travel: Write the name of a faraway destination on a large piece of card. Stand at the side of your nearest motorway with your packback, stick your thumb out and wait.
Oz Bus: Travel from London to Australia by bus. You can find all the details of the trip in the video below.
Oz Bus was created with a desire to go over land from London to Sydney. We are now in our 4th year and on our 20th trip. London-Sydney is a three-month adventure and transits through 16 different countries. What’s great with these trips is we have a whole host of different nationalities and an age range that is from 18 to 80. We also offer trips to Africa, we have a series of budgets and comfort trips and new for this year is South America and of course we do Australia.
I’ve just returned from leading the London to Sydney trip which was absolutely fantastic, the journey of a lifetime. We left London at the end of September, quite chilly autumn morning. We had to be on the embankment at 6.30. We travelled through Western Europe into Eastern Europe, Serbia, Bulgaria then into Turkey and then on into Asia, Iran, India, Nepal, then over into Thailand, Malasia, Indonesia and then fly over to Australia. Obviously there are certain parts of the world where we have to fly over, we couldn’t go over land, such as Pakistan and Bhurma. There are many very different highlights, I think amongst them my favourite would be the Everest flights. I don’t think I’d be standing on top of the Everest, so that was awesome to see Everest, and Ayers Rock. It’s not just a rock. To see it at sunset with a bottle of bubblies, sun rise and to do the walk all the way round it early in the morning.
When the unusual situations there’s more work for Oz Bus, they must give inside knowledge on the trips. Having been started as a passenger on the first load of the New York trip. First thing most people ask when we are in the New York trip going over land is how you go over land from London to New York, it’s a great deal of water in the way. Basically we use a cruise ship to go for two weeks from China to Alaska, it’s one of seven different forms of transport when we are not on a bus on this trip. This section of journey takes about two and a half weeks, which is longer than your average family holiday, takes you through Europe through Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, up to Poland, then through the Baltic states and into Russia to St Petersburg and Moscow. The next section is completely different again. In Moscow we board a trans Siberian railway, a travel experience in its own right. From Moscow we go through Siberia, that section actually contains two of my personal highlights on the trip, Lake Baikal the deepest fresh water lake in the world was frozen when we would walk cross it for two kilometers and watch the sun come down over the mainland. It was a truly stunning moment. And in Mongolia we spent a night in a national park in Gher, it’s about as relaxing as it gets. And then from Mongolia … in China, stopping in Beijing for a 10-day loop which takes you through the castle of … and back up to … and … to the Great Wall before returning to Beijing. And then it changes again, after China two weeks at sea on a cruise ship, so many different parts of the trip, totally different from the rest of the adventure. It’s a chance to relax, and do as little or as much as you like. After the cruise ship it all changes once more, and we hit mainland USA, starting off in Alaska in Anchorage. We head off on a sleeper bus up into the wilds of Alaska. From Alaska we go down in an inside passage on a series of ferries, through Canada, through Vancouver, Seattle, then Sernise for the National Parks, and North America and the north of Chicago, Niagara and New York.
Oz Bus is the most amazing experience. It’s a journey of a lifetime, and you’ll make such lifelong friends.
