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I'm about to take a depressingly long bus ride in Latin America and am wondering what the longest scheduled public bus ride in the world is.

By 'scheduled' I mean for there to be a regularly operating connection between the start and destination locations, without switching buses. Besides the fact that they no longer seem to operate, this would disqualify something like oz-bus.

By 'longest' I'm tending to favour distance over duration, though either way, circular repetitive journeys would obviously be excluded.

Edit (August 2017): I took the bus from Lima to Rio de Janeiro. Just over five days from beginning to end. A write up.

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  • WHen I was in Argentina, I was told about one that takes a week, from Caracas to Buenos Aires. Not sure if hearsay or real though.
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 0:14
  • Allegedly there was a plan to have a bus from Kashmir to Birmingham taking 12 to 13 days (indiatoday.intoday.in/story/…)
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 0:16
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    Yeah, Irkutsk is the first stop where the rest of the journey is in Russia's interior. Plus there's a major junction with the railroad there. Nearly everyone is plastered on vodka, few police. The buses were already outmoded in the communist era, today they are about 30 - 35 years old, poorly ventilated, some with no heating, no lighting. No chance to get food. Plus passengers are expected to help push if the bus gets caught in a snow drift. I have a friend who regularly takes the bus from Syzran to Tver and she fills me in on the 'pleasantries'. Your journey in Latin America is a waltz :)
    – Gayot Fow
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 4:44
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    @CGCampbell The fact that I'm amazed by a China to Moscow connection does not mean it also qualifies as a valid answer. The implication was, however, that Irkutsk to Moscow was direct. Anyway, it seems to me the question is clear and, as I also pointed out, this website has many similar longest/furthest questions that have been accepted as valid questions and required similar, or more, legwork to answer. Here's just one: travel.stackexchange.com/questions/5149/…
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 23:52
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    @LorenPechtel Ok. I'd say that if the objective is sightseeing, and not getting from A to B, the nature of the journey is very different from what we normally associate with 'public transport', no?
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 0:29

7 Answers 7

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Lima to Rio de Janeiro. Six hours more than Lima to São Paulo. DW has a documentary on this trip. My personal longest is SP to Recife - 54 hours (scheduled for 48 hours)

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    Both tripadvisor.ca/… and highwaybrazil.com/brazil/… says this started at the end of Jan 2016 so no wonder Carl from Busbud's excellent answer doesn't contain it.
    – user4188
    Commented Jun 3, 2017 at 22:11
  • Well well well. I'm quite amazed Ormeno is still offering this: The price is steep and the ticket is not easy to book.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 13:15
  • youtube.com/watch?v=C_ODFlqURxY
    – hippietrail
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 1:32
  • FYI, Google Maps says it's 4800 km.
    – Johnnyjanko
    Commented Sep 12, 2023 at 7:42
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I work at Busbud, where we're working to aggregate all the world's bus providers and routes. I had a look though our database. We're sure we don't know about everything yet, but we've found a lot of routes. There are several long routes in South and North America. I compared them using the driving distance calculated by Google Maps.

Looking for trips with no transfers, where it seems the same vehicle travels the whole route, here are the top contenders:

South America:

  • 6118 km: Lima, Peru to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Ormeño) - via Sao Paulo and Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil. DW Documentary on it's launch.
  • 5582 km: Lima, Peru to Buenos Aires, Argentina (Ormeño) - via Santiago, Chile.

There are documentaries and tv reports about the long direct routes on youtube where you can see the same coach goes all the way through.

North America:

Europe:

  • 3631 km: Braunschweig, Germany to Grozny, Chechnya, Russia (KVN) - The route is currently a bit longer than normal since it's detouring around the entire eastern Ukraine through Belarus.
  • 3558 km: Burgas, Bulgaria to Liverpool, England, United Kingdom (Sofia Bus) - via Maribor, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Paris, London, Manchester.

Africa

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    Awesome! Your Lima to Sao Paulo is too short as it runs through Rio Branco, in Acre, making the total distance closer to 5700km.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 18:18
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    kvn24.de
    – Carl
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 18:20
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    The only China-Russia connections we know are over around Vladivostock, they're much shorter (~1000km)
    – Carl
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 18:26
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    @Carl: I love how 1000 km counts as "short" in the context of this question.
    – Michael Seifert
    Commented Sep 23, 2015 at 13:05
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    "All passengers are required to get off the bus for cleaning in Sudbury" - the bus or the passengers? :)
    – The Wandering Dev Manager
    Commented Sep 23, 2015 at 15:21
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It's very hard to prove which one is the longest. There's a 96 hour ride by Expreso Ormeño from Lima to Sao Paulo. I can't find proof that Birmingham bus ever happened.

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  • The Lima to Sao Paulo bus departs once a week.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 1:00
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    I know a friend of mine who came from Russia in a bus, on a 5-day long bus trip. If that's true or not, I can't exactly tell.
    – Ismael Miguel
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 10:19
  • 6.000km trip you can find pictures here (article in portuguese). Brazil is a large country where bus trips are common, Not hard to find 2 days trips from São Paulo to the northen states. Also check rules about stops, in Brazil there are a few laws about stops frequency, for example the bus must stop each 4 hours and dirvers must switch each 8hrs, etc
    – jean
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 11:11
  • that happens in the canadian example below, but its the drivers that change, no transfers (passenger does not have to get off the bus) that I think the OP cares about.
    – pocketfullofcheese
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 18:11
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I once took a bus from Toronto, ON (Canada) to Yellowknife, NWT. It took 80 hours. However, I seem to recall switching buses once in Calgary, AB. A search on (search at Greyhound suggests there is a transfer in Winnipeg, which I don't remember). That makes it about 2000km. Or 3400km if it was Calgary (it doesn't cut through the US).

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  • That might be a contender for the longest North American bus ride. :)
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 13:33
  • A colleague once traveled from Toronto to Mexico City by Greyhound many many years ago. Current Greyhound website informs it takes 78h but includes 5 transfers
    – blackbird
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 17:51
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    While Toronto to Calgary seems to currently require a transfer in Winnipeg, Calgary to Toronto appears to be one bus without any transfers. It takes 52 hours, 20 minutes if it runs on time.
    – Michael Seifert
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 17:44
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    I took the Calgary to Toronto bus last week, ran like clock-work on the departing each stop on the dot.
    – Carl
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 18:04
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    @I've done the Calgary (well, Banff to Calgary first), to Toronto, gave up in Winnipeg and switched to train ;)
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Sep 23, 2015 at 0:37
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Harare Zimbabwe to Dare Salaam Tanzania 2,285 km Taqwa and Falcon Buses is the lonngest in Africa 52 Hours journey.

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In Europe, Eurolines operates relatively frequent bus drives between major cities and holiday favourites. The longest direct line I could find on their website rides from Hamburg (Germany), to Burgas (Bulgaria), takes 40 hours and covers just over 2300 km (assuming they take the shortest route). There might be longer ones, ... EDIT: From their French site, they also operate a direct line from Paris to Casablanca (Maroc). Also just over 2300 km, takes roughly 37 hours.

I remember from my visit to Argentina that they have very long bus rides with luxury buses including sleeping facility. I looked it up in the Lonely Planet (2008 issue) and found a depressing long ride from Buenos Aires to Rio Gallegos that takes 36-40 hours. The distance is about 2500 km (Google Maps). I am not sure it is a direct line, but wouldn't be surprised if it was.

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  • I also wouldn't be surprised if that Argentine connection is direct. It's pretty much par for the course in Latin America.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 13:25
  • That European bus connection is a good find. Eurolines also used to go to Moscow, but that seems to be discontinued.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 13:25
  • If you take the bus from Paris to Casablanca, there would presumably be a break in the driving in the middle.
    – Michael Seifert
    Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 17:07
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    @MichaelSeifert True, but it would still be the same service on the same bus. Nevertheless, this distance is 'only' 2400km.
    – MastaBaba
    Commented Sep 23, 2015 at 3:21
  • From the German site: Düsseldorf - Istanbul, over 2500 km, 43 hours.
    – user24582
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 11:33
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Why are you excluding the oz-bus?

While the London - Sydney route breaks your conditions, what about London - Kathmandu?

Regularly scheduled, one vehicle. 47 days. (Note that I have taken two such trips, both with budget operators {necessity--most of them had rules that excluded us.} On schedule?! No way!) And they're back in business.

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    Clever, and one heck of a journey! Though their website seems to have information from 2011-2012 (that's when the last trip dates are listed), so I'm not so sure about "regularly scheduled." I suppose there's also question at some point as to what continues a public bus vs a tour.
    – Zach Lipton
    Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 6:51
  • @ZachLipton Note that at least in the past there were many companies running such trips. And if you find one and it has a seat you can negotiate with the driver for passage. That's what we did for Delhi -> Tehran (but due to breakdowns we ended up leaving them in Shiraz.)
    – Loren Pechtel
    Commented Jan 16, 2018 at 5:20

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