What a joy to find a travel site dedicated to train and ship travel rather than the tiresome horde of flight and hotel offerings. The Man in Seat61 is a beautifully informative site providing detailed information on everything you need to travel across Europe, Asia and beyond using trains and ships. It’s a labour of love from ex railman Mark Smith, which has turned into a full time job, but the enthusiasm still shines through.
There are specific pages for each possible destination country, as well as optimum route advice, maps and currency information. There’s even a superbly useful Buy Tickets page to help you book and purchase seats from within different countries. Awesome. Check out the excellent pilot TV show too (hope it gets a full series!).
I’ve also got to say the idea of travelling by train overland to India sounds exotic and extremely awesome. Maybe one day…
What does the site aim to do? In a nutshell, two things: First, it sets out to HELP people who already know they want to travel by train or ferry, but who can’t find out about it through normal commercial websites or travel agencies. These days, many people want to cut their carbon footprint or are simply fed up with the hassle of flying. Many of us prefer train travel, and a significant number of people are afraid of flying or medically restricted from doing so. However, information on alternatives to flying can often be difficult if not impossible to find.
I just love seat61.com it made such a big difference to my European trip this year. I also came across http://www.flightlesstravel.com which does not have as much info but is a more modern site and has interactive features with a form and directory which members add their own routes to. Definitely worth a look as its grown a lot over the last few months.