Posted on Wednesday, 13 December 2017

Younger people might envy the cut-price and free travel enjoyed by older generations in the UK, but for one retired couple from Oxford, bus passes and senior railcards would be useless on their most recent holiday.

Phil and Emma Whiting decided to visit their son Oliver in Hong Kong, but instead of flying – which would take about 12 hours – they decided to go overland – which took them eight weeks.

The various transportation units they used included buses, trains, taxis and ferries. They even rode a horse and a cable car in order to reach their son.

Mr Whiting explained to SWNS: “My wife Emma, 61, took early retirement four years ago from her job as a social worker and we have often planned a big journey like this."

“We decided it was important to us that we actually travelled to get there, and that we stopped off in various places.”

Much of the couple's journey relied on trains, beginning with the Eurostar which speeded them across mainland Europe, with a pit stop in Berlin. They also stopped off in Belarus en-route to Moscow, where they boarded the legendary Trans-Siberian railway for a four-day odyssey into Mongolia.

While some might worry that such a journey would be a little monotonous, the Oxford couple were enthralled by the Russian landscape:

“It seems like you could get bored easily, but you just don't,” said Mr Whiting. “You're travelling through endless landscapes of Russian history.

“There were also lots of other travellers on the train doing similar journeys to us, of all different nationalities, so after a couple of days you gel as a community.”

The Whitings also enjoyed a trek through the Golden Triangle in South-East Asia, spending balmy nights in yurts and sunny days on horseback, before reaching China.

Mr Whiting was impressed by China, with its huge engineering projects – both ancient and modern. Indeed, the modernity of China was particularly striking for Mr Whiting: “It calls itself a communist country, but it's actually one of the most capitalist places you could go to.”

And while public transport is occasionally maligned in the UK, the couple were impressed by the punctuality of the trains they used, claiming they were no instances of lateness in the entire eight weeks.

Mr Whiting did a number of sketches on the journey, which he plans to finish in his Oxford studio.

The two-month trip took an entire year to plan – with a number of visas and bookings of popular train routes to organise.

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