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Backpacking Routes

  1. Backpacking Routes

**Backpacking Routes** is a set of three long-distance overland travel circuits first published in **October 2016**, built so that **every stop is reachable from the one before** — the point being that a traveller with little money can set out and keep going without getting stranded[1]. Where land travel genuinely stops — an ocean, a closed border — the document names the one boat or flight that bridges the gap and where the road picks up again. Each stop carries the entry allowance that applied in 2016 and a list of the goods, crafts, materials, seeds and plants the region is known for.

It is **not a hajj and not a pilgrimage circuit**. It is route planning: a chain of places you can actually get between on the ground.

This is a neutral, educational reference. Entry rules, border crossings and the legality of carrying seeds, plants or any regulated material change constantly and vary by country — see § Borders, customs and quarantine.

The idea

Long-distance overland travel fails at the joins. Someone can afford to reach a city and then find the next leg needs a flight they cannot buy, a visa they cannot get at the border, or a crossing that has closed. The routes below were drawn to remove those failures: each leg was chosen because it is reachable from the previous one by road, rail or short sea crossing, within the entry allowance the previous country gives.

The second idea is that a route is more useful the more people walk it. A chain of stops that many travellers use becomes something else — a corridor with known crossings, known costs, people who have been there before, and goods that move along it. That is what the **Silk Road** was: not an engineering project but a route that enough people used often enough that it became infrastructure.

The three routes

Route 1 — the Americas to the Indian subcontinent

Colombia (Medellín, Cali, Sincelejo, Cartagena; 90 days, 180 with extension) → Venezuela (Maturín; 90 days) → Brazil (Manaus; 90 per visit, 180 per year) → Peru (Cusco; 183 days) → fly Cusco–Los Angeles–Delhi → India (Delhi, Manali, Pushkar, Palolem, Palakkad and Parambikulam, Varanasi; 180 days) → Nepal (Kathmandu; 15/30/90 days, 150 per year) → Tibet (Lhasa, visa obtained in Kathmandu) → China (Chengdu; 72-hour visa-free transit, or 90 days) → Guam (US territory, no visa).

Route 2 — Western Europe, the Maghreb and the Levant

Ireland (Cork, Waterford) → England (Swansea, Portsmouth, Norwich) → Netherlands (Amsterdam, Maastricht) → Germany (Koblenz) → France (Nancy, Marseille) → Spain (Tarragona, Málaga) — the Schengen countries sharing one 90-days-in-180 allowance → boat to Morocco (Tangier, Al Hoceima, Berkane) → Algeria (Oran, Algiers, Constantine, Annaba) → Tunisia (Bizerte, Tunis) → boat to Italy (Trapani, Agrigento, Brindisi) → Albania (Durrës) → Macedonia (Debar, Tetovo, Kumanovo) → Bulgaria (Pernik, Plovdiv) → Turkey (Edirne, Istanbul, Eskişehir, Konya, Mersin) → boat Taşucu to Tripoli → Lebanon (Tyre) → fly Beirut to Larnaca → Cyprus → fly to Tel Aviv → Israel (Rishon LeZion, Be'er Sheva, Mitzpe Ramon) → Egypt (Taba, Dahab, Sharm El Sheikh, Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Aswan).

Route 3 — Southern and Eastern Africa to Egypt

South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban) → Eswatini (Manzini) → back through South Africa (Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Musina) → Zimbabwe (Bulawayo, Harare by train, Mutare) → Mozambique (Chimoio, Tete) → Malawi (Blantyre, Liwonde, Mangochi, Monkey Bay, Lilongwe) → Zambia (Chipata, Mfuwe) → back through Malawi (Lilongwe, Mzuzu, Nkhata Bay) → Tanzania (Mbeya, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Arusha) → Kenya (Nairobi, Marsabit) → Ethiopia (Moyale, Awassa, Addis Ababa — Sudan visa obtained here) → fly to Sudan (Khartoum, Wadi Halfa) → Egypt (Aswan, Luxor, Cairo).

The four breaks in the chain. Cusco–Los Angeles–Delhi; Spain–Morocco and Tunisia–Sicily by boat; Turkey–Lebanon by boat and Beirut–Larnaca–Tel Aviv by plane; Addis Ababa–Khartoum by plane. Everything else is land.

Regional goods, by stop

The 2016 document listed, for each stop, what the region is known for. Reproduced below with the goods each place is in fact a significant or sole source of.

Route 1

Route 2

Route 3

What the routes pass through

Several stops are not merely known for a good but are its origin or sole commercial source: meerschaum at Eskişehir, murex purple at Tyre, tanzanite at Merelani, emerald at Kagem, shaligram in the Kali Gandaki, arabica in the Ethiopian forests, gum arabic in Sudan. Read as a line rather than a list, the routes trace the same corridors that carried these goods historically — the Tea-Horse Road out of Ya'an, the Nabataean incense road through the Negev, the Nile and Red Sea routes into Egypt.

Borders, customs and quarantine

The entry allowances, transit rules and crossings recorded in the 2016 source are out of date and must be independently verified. Country names have changed (Swaziland is now Eswatini), sea routes have altered, and visa policy moves constantly.

Separately and importantly: moving seeds, cuttings, live plants, animal products or any regulated material across a border is heavily regulated and in many cases prohibited. Agricultural quarantine and customs law applies to ordinary seed independently of anything else, and a number of the plants listed above are controlled in one or more of the countries on these routes. This article records what each region is known for; it is not advice to carry any of it anywhere, and travellers are responsible for checking current customs, quarantine and controlled-substance law in every country they enter.

Sources

[1]

[2]

Coverage

Overland travel planning · regional goods and materials · trade geography

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References

  1. https://steemit.com/@marsresident/routes-for-backpacking-pilgrimages
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road

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