Overlanding is travelling to remote places keeping the journey as the primary goal. It is typically accomplished with off-road transport which is mechanized by bicycles or trucks where camping done for lodging purposes, and can extend up to many months and years, around international boundaries.
In the late 1960s overland travel for commercial purposes saw a great advent with companies offering overland tour packages to large groups of trucks which are specially equipped. In Africa, the journey last fro few months and is relied on passengers paying for preparation of food, purchase of food and camp set up. The ‘trans’ was always the end of this journey, i.e. from Europe to South Africa’s Cape Town. Since then commercial overlanding has spread to all continents except Antarctica.
The Trans-Siberian Railways is about 9,288 km or 5,771 miles and is one of the longest overland distance requiring around seven days reaching from Moscow to Vladivostok. This provides an alternative for air travel between Asia and Europe. Completed in 1970, the Indian Pacific Railway links Sydney to Perth, Australia. It extends to about 4,343 km or 2,699 miles and needs four days to span including the longest straight stretch of railways globally.
The Tōkaidō Shinkansen, the high speed railway of Japan was introduced in 1964 and has carried around 4 billion people. The new trains, N700 series, can travel at 300km/h or 190mph. The fastest train is the TGV at France, having a speed of maximum 500km/h or 310 mph. It is faster than many of the air travels in the country.
Africa has some of the longest and traditional overland routes. The route of Cairo to Cape Town covers above 10,000 km or 6,200 miles and it goes by the Nile River passing through Sudan and Egypt, then moving to Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia and Botswana. Wally Byam, the American trailer manufacturing company, along with other caravans treaded the route beginning from Cape Town ending in Cairo, through Rhodesia, which are now known as Zimbabwe and Zambia, then to Belgian Congo (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and northwards from Kenya).