Mapped: The Longest Road Trips

4 min readOct 9, 2017

Does the thought of your next big adventure give you itchy feet? Are you full of wanderlust? Over 90 percent of people will go on a road trip in their lifetime, and Park Indigo have curated some of The World’s Longest Road Trips especially for the inner globe-trotter within all of us.

The different journeys travel across whole continents, jumping across borders and rack up plenty of miles. Have you ever wondered what the longest ring road in Europe is? What about a 2,750km long seaside drive? If that doesn’t fulfil your adventurous appetite then will the longest land route, covering a whopping 33,612km, suffice?

In the future, road tripping will be completely different and corners of the world will be much easier to access. The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TEPR) is planned by Russian School of Science. It would mean you could drive (with help from the Eurostar and the Panama Canal) from the top of the UK, say Wick in Scotland, to the very bottom of South America, Cape Horn.

If you can’t wait that long, what about a leisurely 181 hour drive from London to Cape Town? The Euro-African Road Trip would take just over a week to complete the 13,652.07km — and that’s non-stop! Starting in London, UK, the inspiring journey travels through plenty of countries including France, Spain, Algeria, Nigeria, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Namibia and South Africa.

Perhaps it’s just the longest highway in Asia that you want to get you from A to B? Asian Highway 1 (AH1) is the longest route of the Asian Highway Network, running 20,557 km (12,774 mi) from Tokyo, Japan via Korea, China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran to the border between Turkey and Bulgaria west of Istanbul where it joins end-on with European route E80. With 123 hours of driving you could complete AH1 in just over 5 days.

The longest road trip of them all is an astonishing 33,612km; The Longest Land Route. Starting just to the right of the Indian Ocean in Serai, Indonesia the gargantuan voyage, that includes ferries, travels along to Malaysia, north through China, west across Asia and Russia where it meets Europe at Belarus. From here the route carries on west through Europe to Spain, and south through Africa, reaching it’s final destination of Quoin Point, South Africa. Confused ? Take a look at the graphic to see the route in full. Without stopping, not even for sleep or to check a map, you could do the trip in 22 days.

Not all of the longest road trips in the world are about pure distance: scenic routes are up there too. The Longest Ring Road in Europe is Route 1 in Iceland. The modest 1,332km journey encircles the country, stopping at most of the major cities along the way including the capital of Reykjavik. Without any stopping, Route 1 would take you just over 21 hours to complete, but with the breath-taking views we imagine it will take much longer!