My mother would not be happy about it and my friends would call me crazy. Still, I see it as a possibility. An adventurous, though dangerous one. What I considered impossible has been attempted by many before me and their suggestions, information and experiences are available online. Let’s just hop on the train from Amsterdam to South-India!

Before I kidnap you for a transcontinental trip, first place yourself in my shoes. Imagine: you are a Master Student Cultural Anthropology, fascinated by sustainable development, ecovillages, organic farming, alternative lifestyles, green energy and visions of a real-life Utopia. Inspired by Mahatma Ghandi and some of your Indian friends, your dreams about India have become more and more conscious over the years. You are very curious to visit the land with the highest relative amount of vegetarians and the ahimsa and nature-respecting philosophy of your Ghandi-idol. Yes, you are aware of some lingering Orientalistic predispositions.  However you wonder how it is possible that this country has developed immense environmental problems, ranging from dumping of toxic and domestic waste to air pollution and health problems that come with it? Not to mention Climate Change and the increasing amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the development of industries, the rise of cheap car users, more people being able to afford meat, animal products and electronic devices, just to name a few.   

Finally your study allows you to do what Anthropology is all about: fieldwork. Suddenly you are allowed to go anywhere in the world, as long as there are humans (by which I don’t say an ‘anthropology of animals’ would not be interesting).  While surfing the internet you stumble upon Auroville and all pieces seem to fit together. Auroville is a universal township in the South of India, near Pondicherry. Almost 2000 people with roots in 35 countries, live and work there together with the shared goal of creating ‘human unity’ and ‘reducing their ecological footprint’. Even though Auroville started as a idealistic project in the sixties, based upon the spiritual teaching of Sri Aurobindo, this international ecovillage is more than just another hippie-commune. Inhabitants are actively seeking ways to become (self-)sustainable in their personal and community life. Think of nice sounding names like Solar Kitchen (a restaurant, serving organic, local, vegetarian food while only using solar energy), Sadhana Forest ( a reforestation project with local and international volunteers) and several communities within the city infrastructure supplying their energy needs with solar-, wind- and human-powered energy. You already see yourself planting trees after a delicious vegan meal, while asking inhabitants about their sense of belonging to Auroville’s community and their interpretation of sustainability. But after some hours of excitement, you realize the practical side of your Indian adventure.  Auroville is not in your backyard, at least not if you live in Amsterdam. That is where the plane comes it. Suddenly professors start to talk about booking flights and cheap tickets. You surf to airline companies to find out it the flight Amsterdam-Pondicherry is two times as expensive as when you go to London first to take exactly the same airplane: London-Amsterdam-Pondicherry. With some climate change documentaries in mind, you know very well how those airline companies keep their prices low. But to travel to India, you NEED to take the plane! Or not?

Out of curiosity I googled ‘Europe-India train’. It did not even take long before I arrived at a website with the inspiring title: how to travel overland from London to India or Pakistan. The same website even offers detailed information about how to get from Europe to Australia without depending upon polluting aviation. For my London-India search, I got a nice overview of my itinerary on a map, the timetable, costs and travelers reports. If I measure the distance with my fingers, it even seems reasonable. Still, travelling overland is not only less comfortable than being spoiled with free movies, plastic boxed food and comfortable seats in which you can rest for some hours to notice that you already arrived at the other side of the world when opening your eyes. Taking the train also confronts you with other practical problems. In the first place, a train ride from London to India would take you at least two to three weeks, if you are lucky. Many trains only run once or twice a month, which means you have to spend several days in ‘transit’ while waiting for a connection from East-Turkey to Tehran, or worse: pass some scary weeks at the Pakistani border. And then there is still the question if you get through. As the website mentions “ This trip will take a lot of D.I.Y-organisation, including the bureaucracy involved in getting an Iranian visa. Not to forget the security concerns with bandit attacks in southeast Iran near the Pakistan border”.  Recently (from summer 2009) Pakistan is not allowing Westerners to use the trains or other surface travel within Pakistan. The Pakistani government states it wants to avoid the embarrassment of having a Westerner involved in any potential terrorist attack. Nevertheless, the website stays optimistic:  “for more adventurous travellers willing to brave this, it promises to be an epic trip”.

In other words, in case Pakistan allows climate-aware westerners to travel overland by December 2009, the dilemma is up to me. Should I risk my life by travelling as a ‘girl alone’ through Eastern Asia for 3 weeks, using public transportation? Or is protecting my security reason enough to boost my carbon footprint by stepping on a transcontinental plane and barely offset my own emissions by planting trees in Auroville?

Most people will not even think of the option to use overland transportation for long-distance travel. For those who need to be convinced that it is possible, I can suggest a (very well-written) travel book by a vastly experienced Italian Asia correspondent who decided not to take the plane for one year. A Fortune Teller Told Me offers a nuanced account of Tiziano Terzani’s trip from Europe to the Far East, Eastern-Asia and back to Italy, all without using one single aircraft. His decision was not influenced by ecological concerns, but rather by a combination of superstition and challenge.  Warned by a Hong Kong fortune-teller not to risk flying for an entire year, Titziano Terzani took what he called “the first step into an unknown world… it turned out to be one of the most extraordinary years I have ever spent: I was marked for death, and instead I was reborn”.  

A quote from the book to consider when planning your next travel:

“Reached by plane, all places become alike- destinations separated from one another by nothing more than a few hours’flight. Frontiers, created by nature and history and rooted in the consciousness of the people who live within them, lose their meaning and cease to exist for those who travel to and from the air-conditioned bubbles of airports, where the border is a policeman in front of a computer screen, where the first encounter with the new place is the baggage carousel, where the emotion of leave-taking is dissipated in the rush to get to the dutu-free shop- now the same everywhere. (…)

Nowadays airports have a false allure of advertisements- islands of relative perfection even amid the wreckage of the countries in which they are situated. They all look alike, all speak the same international language that makes you feel you have come home. But in fact you have only landed at the outskirts of a city, from which you must leave again by bus or taxi for a centre which is always far away. A railway station, on the other hand, is a true mirror of the city in whose heart it lies. Stations are close to the cathedrals, mosques, pagodas or mausoleums. On reaching them you have well and truly arrived (Terzani, 1997: 5).