With all the climate talk you actually don’t need to be “flight-shamed” even if you travel to Asia—it’s possible to travel to Asia without flying. It’s possible with freighter ships but trains are the most practical.
Seat61.com gives a lot of information on how to do that. For example you can travel from Stockholm to Hong Kong in 9 days. That’s not counting the departure day from Stockholm as one day. And not staying overnight in Moscow and Beijing as the “man in seat 61” advises.
- Day 0-1: ferry to Helsinki, 1 night
- Day 1-2: RZD train “Tolstoi” to Moscow, 1 night
- Day 2-8: train to Beijing (via the Trans-Siberian Railway and Mongolia, 6 nights)
- Day 8-9: high speed train (with beds!) to Guangzhou, 1 night
- Day 9: train to Hong Kong. You’ve arrived! NOTE! There’s a direct high speed train from Beijing to Hong Kong every day, but you won’t arrive until evening on Day 9.
It’s not so easy to book the Moscow-Beijing-train (you should find a travel agency like kilroy.se, very expensive ~12000kr, or Google for any website that sells tickets). For the rest of the trains and ferries, it’s very easy to book online (for Helsinki-Moscow, rzd-online.ru; for trains in China, trip.com).
I took the trip one day in the opposite direction (Hong Kong to Sweden). I must say it feels very strange to stay on the same train for a week! If you have a month or more, you might want to make stopovers in Russia, Mongolia and China (taking local slow trains on the way).
It’s also nice to continue to Southeast Asia via Nanning and Hanoi, all the way to Singapore and Indonesia (some sections must be done with buses)!
