Attending a family wedding often means spending a few hours in the car and spending the night. But as Shannon Coggins sets off to see her sister off at the wedding, the 58-year-old is embarking on an epic four-month journey that will see her travel more than 10,000 miles and cross 19 countries. These include being interrogated by Russian police and encountering Komodo dragons in Indonesia. and a near-death experience in Georgia.
The wedding took place on the other side of the world in Australia. While most people would probably be flying in within 24 hours, Ms Coggins, her partner Theo Simon, 66, and their daughter Rosa, 19, who is on a gap year It’s been a long journey.
They travel overland and across seas – by train, bus and ferry – and avoid flying at all costs. The trip, which began on a train in Somerset last August, took years to plan and has yet to return.
The seeds of the idea grew in 2002 after the couple realized how much greenhouse gases they were emitting during a visit to India.
They learned that about 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions come from aviation, much of it commercial travel, and that planes also emit other greenhouse gases.
So the family decided not to travel by plane. When her sister immigrated to Australia in 2007, Ms Coggins began dreaming of alternative modes of transport to visit her and began saving money to pay for the long journey.
Those dreams turned into serious plans two years ago when her sister announced she would get married in Australia in December 2023.
The family’s “once-in-a-lifetime adventure” required more than just significant savings and typical travel preparations, such as planning a route and applying for visas to Russia and China. The couple also must find someone to live in their house while they are away.
Ms. Coggins quit her job as a school administrator, and Mr. Simon retired from his job in a small factory. “We really want to do this,” he said.
The family took it eurostar Fly from London to Amsterdam, then via the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The family was unable to find any transportation other than a plane from Dili, East Timor, to Australia and were forced to take a 300-mile flight to Australia.
“We were all feeling a little defeated because it would have been nice to have come all this way without flying,” Mr. Simon said. But that’s not the only challenge they have to face on this extraordinary journey.
In Georgia, after traveling eight hours on dangerous roads in a “too fast” minibus, a family got off the bus thinking they could walk to their hotel, which they thought was three miles away.
“I never want to be in another car again,” Ms. Coggins said. “We started walking and within five minutes it started raining. We put on our £1.99 raincoats we bought in the UK and wandered across the road.
“It was pouring rain. It was so dark. We walked around for three hours. We were soaked to the skin.”
Later in the trip, as they left Russia, Mr. Simon was removed from the train carriage by officers for questioning. “We have to leave the country before midnight because our visas are about to expire,” he said.
“They looked at our passports and then asked me to accompany them and they interrogated me for 45 minutes.
“Something happened, nothing to do with me, but they were looking for something. It was scary. For all I knew, I would be suddenly taken off the train.”
The family then contracted the coronavirus in Kazakhstan and had to quarantine in a hotel for nine days before traveling to China.
But the final leg of their trip – a two-day Greyhound bus trip across Australia to New South Wales – was “the toughest part of the trip”.
“When you’re on a boat or a train, you can lie flat,” Ms. Coggins said. “But when you’re on the bus, your seat doesn’t recline all the way. We did two 24-hour buses in a row and then another 12 hours. It was relentless and hot.”
They arrived at her sister’s house, exhausted, relieved, and filled with stories from the people they met along the way. Oil workers from Kazakhstan spent hours explaining what they saw through train windows. A woman who traveled to Indonesia wearing a headscarf invited her family to her nephew’s traditional Islamic wedding; a Turkish man found they didn’t have enough currency to buy a box of tea and paid for it.
“This kind of trip makes you feel how friendly people are,” Mr. Simon said. “You’re in situations where things don’t turn out the way you imagined; you’re made vulnerable again and again.”
The slow travel also gave them time to see many sights they might have missed on a long flight: Komodo dragons in their natural habitat, coral reefs off the coast of Indonesia; sunrises atop volcanoes; pandas and elephants.
Since blogging about their trip, the family has often been asked for their advice. “Learn how to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ in each language before you get there,” advises Ms. Coggins. She also recommends using an app that allows you to navigate without Wi-Fi or a signal, adding: “Get to the bus stop or terminal early. And don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
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