Can't believe you tried so hard to list reasons for taking the route, and missed an obvious one that other commenters suggested. Travel is not always just A->B as fast as possible.
This is HN, a place where people see dot A and people see dot B but they fail to connect the dots. Reminds me of HN's underwhelming reaction to Dropbox.
One would think that travelling across so many countries and continents would be quite clearly the point of the bus service.
I've given up on expecting any subtlety or nuance from the painfully literal nerds on here. "Must optimize my route for efficiency because I am an engineer! No fun allowed!" There's a certain depressing lack of joie de vivre.
It's not nerdism. It's the dominant ideology of our times - neoliberalism - which demands that everything be valued only in terms of dollars. A trip that takes 50 days is not dollar efficient because you could fly in one day and spend the remaining 49 days earning dollars, i.e. the value of time is only about dollars, and cannot be other measures, especially subjective ones like human enjoyment and wonder.
