I don't think it would surprise anyone to learn that one of my all-time favorite books is Jules Verne's as
1873 adventure book around the world in 80 days if the title wasn't enough of an explanation the story is that a man makes a
a bet that he can travel around the world in 80 days
Which might not sound like much considering now we can just fly around the world in a measure of hours not days
but in
1873 when this book was published
This was on the very verge of being
Possible the first time a journey around the world was made it was done by Ferdinand Magellan's crew and lasted from September 20th
1519 until September 6th
1522 or just under three years
time three hundred and fifty years later in the time Jules
Verne was writing attempts to circumnavigate the globe were still lasting a year or two at their best
so to propose a trip that would only last 80 days back then would be like
suggesting that a plane could fly around the earth and only a couple of hours not days
I think the reason I like this book so much was because with modern inventions like cars and planes
Travel is no longer about how to get someplace but rather what to do once you're there
So I want to use this video to take a look at the journey Verne laid out in his book and see what it would
Be like to travel around the world in terms of today's money and today's
timetables
To get started we'll need some ground rules. Number one. No flying unless absolutely necessary
I'll only choose this if the route used in the book no longer exists. Number two, we're going to follow as precisely as
reasonable of the destinations outlined in the book and number three
I'm only going to be looking at travel between
Cities and not like how to get from this city's train station to the same city's bus station
that's just too much to bother with and
one last thing before we embark despite what the
Fantastic film and the not-so-good film and literally any art about the story of led you to believe including my own thumbnail
No one ever uses a hot-air balloon in this book
they might have gotten it mixed up with Jules Verne's as five weeks in a balloon or
Just added it because the trip from London to Paris would likely have been pretty uneventful
Which is why in the book this part of the journey was literally skipped over in
Reality London to Paris would actually first require a trip from London to Dover on the coast
Which is the really common train ride and doesn't cost too much from Dover
You'd want to take a ferry over the English Channel to the French city of Calais
which will only take an hour and a half Calais de Paris on train will take another hour in 40 minutes and
Honestly, this might be the nicest city we go to on this trip
So I'd understand if you'd want to call it quits already
Paris has got this really cool. Bare metal tower thing and a cool doorway without a wall around it and this other cool thing
That's sort of being rebuilt right now from Paris
Our book takes us to Turin which takes us through the Alps into Italy this trip now takes an average six hours and nine minutes
but what really sucks about it is there's no idyllic countryside or
Scenic mountains to look at at any point on this trip seriously
you just go to sleep for this one and try to forget the
106 dollars you paid for this leg of the journey
From Turin you're going to want to go to Brindisi which lies at the complete bottom of Italy
This will be the longest and most expensive leg of your journey so far taking 9 hours and 34 minutes
But don't worry, if that's nothing compared to what we'll have to do later. If at this point, you're a little tired of trains
Well, you're in luck if you get seasick, well, you're not either way
We need to cross the Mediterranean here in the book
The main character filius takes a passenger ship directly from Brindisi to Suez. This route
however, no longer exists and actually virtually all longer distance passenger boats have been replaced by planes at this point
So this is where we have to cheat just a little and take a few shorter ferries
First is the ferry from Brindisi to Patras in Greece
They only do this route three times a week, so don't miss it. If you do make it here on time
It's going to be 16 hours and 84 dollars until we arrive which will probably feel like forever
So long as there's nothing to see from your boat once we've arrived in Patras
We're going to need to take the bus to Athens
But technically Athens is a landlocked city and will actually need to make another land trip to the nearby port of Piraeus
Honestly, it's only about an hour and 49 minute walk though
So let's just save a few bucks and make the hike once we get there
We'll be disappointed to find out that all passenger boats to Egypt were closed in 2012 due to instability in the region
Which means we're going to need to walk another hour and 49 minutes back to Athens wasting a little over three hours over time
But not a cent and from Athens
we need to fly to
Alexandria the port our ship likely would have ducked into had the route still existed to get back on track
We'll need to take the train from Alexandria to Cairo. This is a pretty quick two-hour train ride and costs around five dollars
Once we're in Cairo unless you wanted to check out the big pile of rocks they have here
It's another nearly three hour train ride to Suez, but it only costs two dollars
Suez is actually the first place the book gives a full account of after London and really marks just the beginning of this journey
So I hope you're not tired yet
the Suez Canal was finished just four years before Jules Verne wrote this book and it was likely in large part due to the
Completion of this canal that Verne thought this journey was possible as just four years earlier
All boats would have needed to sail all the way around Africa if they wanted to keep heading east
likely adding days to even months to a
After this new route was created
however
Suez became a thriving port taking advantage of the constant flow of passenger and commercial ships passing through the canal
But since then passenger traffic has really died out. So to get to Aden the next step of our journey
We're going to need to be creative
The best I could find is a ferry to the city of Jeddah and Saudi Arabia leaving only twice a week from Suez
This is a long one - at 25 hours, but and no price is given anywhere on the website
So I'm going to assume that means it's free if we have time in Jeddah
We might want to visit the nearby city of Mecca and complete our Hajj
If not, then we need to get to Bombay next which since the book was written has changed its name to Mumbai
the only problem getting there is
Pirates meaning passenger ships really don't sail through these waters anymore
so unless you want to try your luck sneaking onto a cargo ship we'll need to cheat one last time and fly and
Just like that
What would have been one of the longest legs of our journey across the Indian Ocean has now only taken four hours of our time
Though it does come at a hefty
373 dollars which is still probably better than what a pirate would have charged for safe passage
Once we're in Mumbai, I suggest you look around it might not look super impressive now
But by the year 2050 Mumbai is set to become the biggest city on earth
So you'll technically be able to say you were here before it was cool from Mumbai. The book takes us to Allahabad
Which also goes by a different official name now Prayagraj
The train ride to get here is a pinch over 24 hours, but don't worry
I hear India has some of the best and most spacious trains anywhere in the world
So this should be a comfortable one
but if you'd really like to avoid these trains for some reason it was at this point in the book that the characters realised the
Train to Allahabad hadn't actually been finished yet
Difficult good man, whatever
This is the end of the line
end of a mine
To get themselves the rest of the way there then of course
they talk to elephants but looking into it an average elephant will cost you anywhere from
eleven thousand to thirty thousand dollars depending on where and how
Legally you want to purchase your new best friend. So I think I might just take the train from Prayagraj
we need to get to Calcutta. Which also changed its name this time to Kolkata
This is the nearly 16 hour ride
but honestly tickets in India are actually pretty cheap and I wouldn't blame you if you swapped your six dollar economy ticket for the
$26 first-class ticket either way, we'll get to Kolkata at the same time and from here
We'll need to find a way to Hong Kong in the book
Phileas takes another passenger ship and along the way briefly stopped over in Singapore
But we're going to ignore Singapore for now because again, there aren't any boats that do this route anymore
Now this doesn't necessarily we need to fly, but we will have to take a huge detour from Kolkata
We need to catch the once daily train to see Siliguori from here. Take a cab to Yadong Xian and in the process
We'll be crossing the border from India into China from Yadong
We need to find a bus that only runs three times a week to the Tibetan city of Lhasa
Okay
and from here we can catch the once daily bus directly to Nanchong where we can get on another train down to Shenzhen and
Finally at this point. It's only a 50 minute bus ride into Hong Kong and we're back on track
Lucky for us China has some of the newest trains in the world
so the ride from Hong Kong to
Shanghai will be a breeze compared to what the Indian leg of our trip was, but I'll say it
I'm getting a little tired of trains at this point
Which is fine because now we need to cross the yellow sea to get to Yokohama, Japan
However, the only ferry from China to Japan I could find was a car ferry from Shanghai to Kobe once a week
which means if you still have your
Elephant, you can bring it along for the ride and it would only cost two hundred and thirty dollars the downside
Is that car ferries are super slow. So this will take around 47 hours making it the longest leg of our journey so far
So yeah
It's no wonder why people don't really take boats anymore things get worse
Once you get to Kobe and look at the ferry map here while Japan does have a large ferry service industry
There is no Yokohama listed on it. Good thing. I'm here though and know that Yokohama is basically just the port for Tokyo
Unfortunately, there aren't any ferries from Kobe directly to Tokyo
So first we'll need to take the bus across the Osaka Bay to Tokushima from there
It's another very long ferry ride to the current largest city in the world
If you liked Paris's bare-metal tower thing then you might really like this one
They got in Tokyo and they actually have two of those but this one is also technically the tallest tower in the world
I hope you enjoyed that boat ride, though, because now we need to go from Tokyo to San Francisco
Now the only passenger boats making this trip are fancy cruise ships
So we're kind of in luck while we don't need to cheat and take a plane the path
Our cruise takes isn't exactly a straight line through the ocean, which means it's going to take 25
Days and maybe even worse even the most basic ticket will cost us
$6,500, but at the very least I don't think there will be pirates upon arriving in the United States the characters in the
book immediately
encountered a political rally ending with a full-on brawl between the two competing parties and
America ends up looking like nothing more than a political bump stir fire in this book
So we managed to find the first place that hasn't changed at all in the 150 years since this book was written
from San Francisco
The next stop is New York City
Which all the way back then would have included overcoming obstacles like roaming bison herds
Crossing a failed bridge and surviving an attack from the Sioux tribe
But if we want we can just take the nonstop train making this last only three
Days and have the cost of four hundred and forty two dollars
Or in other words twice the price of flying and I know I joked about boring train rides earlier
But really unless you like corn this will be a good time to catch up on your sleep
Once you're in New York, you can check out their metal though
These ones at least wear concrete and class from New York
We'll need to get to Queenstown, Ireland or what's now called Cobh surprise surprise
however
There are no direct passenger ships doing this anymore to make this trip in the book P
Phileas buys his own boat
So here's what we'll do instead
From Cobh, Phileas travelled to Dublin next and I found a cruise going from New York
To Dublin that stops in Cobh so we're going to take that and call it good enough
This one is a 15 day trip and it's going to cost about fifteen hundred dollars
Which is still a lot but a lot cheaper I think than buying a boat
arriving in Dublin,
I hope you're not tired of being on the water yet because we still have one more ferry to cross the Irish Sea
Arriving in Holyhead, though. This trip will be much shorter and cheaper than the last from here
We'll need to get back on track by taking the train to Liverpool and I'm sure Liverpool has a lot of cool stuff
But I'm sure you just want to get to the end of this by now
So we'll have to take one last train ride back to London. This is quick only 2 hours and 15 minutes and costing a final
112 dollars and just like that. We're all the way back to where we started
In total you would have spent 54 days
16 hours and 37 minutes
Traveling and in all likelihood probably much more
Well, actually because you travelled eastward about halfway through your cruise across the Pacific
meaning that while your total travel time would have been 54 days you only would have been halfway for
53 days, which doesn't really matter now, but trust me
It was a really big deal in the book without accounting for food or hotels or pirates or elephants
This trip would have cost you a total of ten thousand six hundred and fifty one dollars
Which is actually pretty good considering you had to take two luxury cruises to make this journey work in the end
I was actually surprised by how long this trip took despite having even cheated a little and if I were to take into account
Eating and sleeping and other wastes of time a trip around the world like this could still take it close to 80 days
But there's only one true way to find out and that's to do it yourself
He so I hope you enjoy it and if you did and you'd like to help me keep making videos
You can check out my patreon and maybe get your name up here like all these generous people
If not, well, that's okay, too
But seriously if anyone watching decides to try this out for real, let me know about it
also
Let me know if there are any other journeys you'd like for me to look at fictional or real?
Odysseus or Marco Polo or whatever leave a suggestion in the comments. Thanks