Ok, so my wife and I are up for some "soft-adventure" travel, to travel around the world by train! We are in our late 60s and will be travelling on Australian passports. This is our planned route. Starting in Adelaide, Indian Pacific train to PER, cheap flight to Bali (DPS). Cross to east end of Java. Train to Jakarta, flight over to Singapore. Train to Bangkok. Train to Kunming, China. Train to Beijing. Train to western China and into Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. Onward through Uzbekistan, then Kazakhstan. Cross the Caspian sea by boat or fly. Cross Azerbaijan/Armenia into eastern Turkey. Train through Europe to Lisbon, Portugal. Fly to east cost of USA or Canada. Cross USA or Canada by train. Fly to SYD. Indian Pacific back to Adelaide!
ok, some background. None of this will be pre-booked as we can't guarantee being able to be in a particular place on any particular date. The only exception is the train to PER from ADL and the flight to DPS. I consider myself to be a problem solver when travelling, as I expect to have plenty of that. I have travelled for 40 years, on and off, and on every continent on earth. I travel light (14kg, all up weight including my roller bag (Osprey)). I will have full travel insurance, including evacuation and satcom connectivity everywhere. Worldwide travel SIM on iPhone15pro. Travel time is open ended and not fixed, but I believe that it can be done in no more than 3 months comfortably. The idea is to stop for a 1-3 days between train journeys to rest up, buy the next train ticket and see and experience a little of the places that we pass through. We certainly don't want to get off one train onto another!
Now, we live in different times! Many journeys (a la internet) like this would take you through Russia. For Australian's this is a DO NOT TRAVEL country at present. (We do not do DO NOT TRAVEL countries - no insurance!), however, I have checked smarttraveller.gov.au and all the countries I suggested above are ok to travel through as of now (things could change of course). So this itinerary can be totally done by avoiding Russia and Iran.
Visas should not be a huge issue I think as those countries where they must be obtained before entry can be obtained before we leave (eg China). The "stan" countries are VOA to Australians, Europe no problem, same with USA/Canada, just ESTA etc.
We would appreciate and advice/tips etc that you may have if you have done something similar or just long distance train journeys. Cheers.
Go for it. Sounds awesome.