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From Nantes to Tokyo by train with his three children: Louis’s journey—40,000 km in four months

Written by Sophie Renassia

Published today

On April 12, 2026, Louis left Nantes with his three sons—Romain, Armand, and Jean—who were 15, 13, and 11 years old at the time. Their goal: a round-trip to Tokyo by land, mainly by train, but also by bus and boat. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, South Korea, and then Japan… Four months later, the small troupe is back in Nantes with 40,066 km on the odometer, That's the equivalent of one trip around the Earth—nearly three-quarters of which was traveled by train!

This travelogue covers: the complete itinerary, the budget, a carbon footprint assessment that’s more nuanced than you might think (and that’s what makes it so interesting), and tips from a dad who weighed everything (right down to his underwear).

And the good news is that, according to him, a trip like this is much more accessible than it seems:

“In 2026, planning and taking a long train trip—lasting several months and crossing several countries—isn’t that complicated: you can book all your tickets and accommodations online, no visas are required, and crossing borders is fairly quick and easy…” — Louis

Louis and his three sons, on their way to Japan

Louis is 44 years old, the father of three boys, and lives in Nantes. After attending business school, working in financial auditing, video game production in Argentina, and earning a specialized master’s degree in environmental engineering, he has been working for nearly 15 years on issues related to the ecological transition—first at a consulting firm, then at a company, and now as a freelancer. And he hasn’t flown on a plane in nearly 10 years.

He knows a thing or two about traveling. And that's exactly what he wanted to pass on to his children: “I lived with my parents in Hong Kong and Cameroon; later, I lived in Argentina, and I was lucky enough to visit Moldova, Equatorial Guinea, Robinson Crusoe Island, and Tibet… I know the power of travel, the richness of encounters, and the value of diversity; I wanted my children to experience that.”, as stated on his travel blog.

And this isn't their first time: in the summer of 2024, the family had already traveled to Istanbul by train for 15 days, passing through Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Bucharest. It was a great way to test the idea and make them want to go even further.

For this big trip, everyone set a goal for themselves and pitched in: writing for Louis, drawing for Romain (15), photography and video editing for Armand (13), and international cuisine for Jean (11).

© Louis Prat - Romain and Armand on the train

The Round-Trip Route: From the Silk Road to Japan

Why the Silk Road?

To travel far without flying with three children, Louis had two requirements: time and safe countries.

“Since I hadn’t flown in nine years, I needed a little time to travel far and discover landscapes, people, and ways of life very different from our own. I also had to avoid the ‘orange zones’ on the State Department’s maps to put my mother, my grandmother, and my first wife at ease.” — Louis, on his blog

"Travel Advisory as of March 25, 2026" map from the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, as published by Louis on his blog (www.denantesatokyo.fr). CC BY-NC-ND License: © MEAE – Crisis and Support Center

All that remained was to choose a destination. Louis first ruled out the American continent: hitchhiking by boat seemed too complicated with three children, and a round-trip sail from Saint-Nazaire to Baltimore would have cost more than 20,000 €. Africa seemed too risky to him. That left the Silk Road and the Far East, which had long been a source of fascination for him.

The stages of the round trip between Nantes and Tokyo

On the way there, the family travels down through Italy (Venice, Naples, Bari), travels through Greece (Meteora, Athens, Mykonos, Samos), then Turkey (Ephesus, Cappadocia, Mount Nemrut, Erzurum), before crossing the Georgian border at Batumi. After the flight from Kutaisi to Aktau, they head to Uzbekistan: Moynak and its Aral Sea ship graveyard, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent. They then pass through Almaty, in Kazakhstan. In China, the route passes through Turpan, Xi’an, Pingyao, and Beijing. A first ferry takes her to South Korea (Seoul, Busan), and a second to Fukuoka, Japan. Kyushu, Himeji, Kyoto, Kanazawa… and finally Tokyo, on June 7, 2026.

On the way back, After visiting Osaka, Mount Kōya, and Naoshima Island, the family traveled to Korea by ferry, then on to China by sea. On the itinerary: Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, the Yellow Mountains of Huangshan, Hong Kong, Yangshuo, and Chengdu. Next came nearly 2,400 km by bus through the Tibetan regions of Sichuan and Qinghai, all the way to Xining. The train then takes over, taking them to Kazakhstan (Balkhash, Karaganda, Aktau, and the Mangystau Peninsula), before the return flight to Georgia. All that remains is to travel through Turkey (Erzurum, Ankara, Istanbul), Romania, Hungary, Germany, and Switzerland to France.

The Complete Journey of Louis and His Sons

You can find the interactive Google Maps map here.

In between, there are breathtaking landscapes: the Cyclades, Venice, the Great Wall of China, the "sugar loaves" of Yangshuo, the Gobi Desert, Japanese gardens, and the Mangystau Peninsula in Kazakhstan.

© Louis Prat - Children on the Great Wall of China

All trips (distance, duration, and CO2 emissions) are detailed in the painting shared by Louis, and the day-by-day itinerary at his blog.

The crossing of the Caspian Sea, the only deviation from the overland journey

A route that was 100% overland would have required the family to travel through a country that was “not recommended.” So Louis had to make an exception:

"Originally, I wanted to travel from Turkey to Azerbaijan and take a boat from Baku across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, but the country is now classified as 'orange.' I had to settle for a short flight across the Caspian Sea, from Kutaisi, Georgia, to Aktau, Kazakhstan.”, Louis explains on his blog.

In total, the flight consists of two 700-km legs—Kutaisi to Aktau on the outbound leg and Aktau to Kutaisi on the return leg—for a total of 1,400 km over more than 40 000.

40 hours by train : the travel record

The longest train ride on this journey: Turpan to Xi'an (taken on the way there, in China), which spans 2,000 km. And what's the longest trip in terms of hours? Karaganda to Aktau, in Kazakhstan, with 40 hours on the meter.

Over the course of the entire trip, the family took 56 train rides, spending nearly 400 hours on board—equivalent to 16 full days.

Fun moments aboard the Aktau-Kungrad overnight train

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20,000 kilometers by train: Julien's adventure from Japan to France

How much does a 4-month train trip to Japan cost?

During his 4-month trip, Louis spent 7,500 € per person, all-inclusive. Here is how this budget is allocated:

In practical terms, this amounts to about €6 per meal per person, and 70 € per night for four people, whether at a hotel or a hostel: the family had decided to go without a tent or sleeping bag.

As for planning, there's no need for a travel agency: according to Louis, all tickets and accommodations can be booked online.

Carbon footprint: 40% lower than flying (and why “ only "40" %)

Louis counted everything, trip by trip. The result: 1.9 metric tons of CO2e per person for the entire trip, compared to 3.1 metric tons for a round-trip flight from Paris to Tokyo (including contrails, according to ADEME’s Carbon Footprint Database). That is approximately 40 % less.

For the one-way trip alone, there are 53 legs, 18,835 km, 265 hours, and 942 kg of CO2e per person.

Source: the table by Louis.

Is the gap less dramatic than one might imagine? Louis attributes this to several factors:

• Distance : With more than 100 trips in 4 months, the family traveled twice as many kilometers as they would have on a direct flight.
• For the same mileage, the difference is clear : His trip, which is primarily by rail, emits 48 g of CO2e per km, compared to 160 g for a long-haul flight—that is, one-third as much. (The 220 g listed in the table refers to short-haul flights.)
• Ferries : It's not widely known, but they emit almost as much as airplanes. Trains and buses, on the other hand, emit on average five times less than airplanes and ferries.
• Geopolitics : If it weren't for the war, Louis estimates that he could have traveled through Ukraine and Russia, rejoined his route in Kazakhstan, and taken only two ferries (China to Korea, then Korea to Japan). His carbon footprint would then have dropped to about 1.3 metric tons of CO2e for the round trip, or nearly 60 % less than the plane.

Above all, slow travel has another, more subtle effect on our environmental footprint:

“The advantage of the train—and, more broadly, of land travel compared to flying—is that it makes trips longer and more expensive. A 4-month trip costing nearly 8,000 € per person is something you do once or twice in a lifetime, whereas a 3-week trip to Japan for just 1,000 € for a plane ticket is something you might be tempted to do more often.” — Louis

© Louis Prat - The “alien landscapes” of the Mangystau Peninsula

More photos here.

Traveling for 4 Months with Kids: Bags, Routine, and School

Lightweight bags, weighed to the nearest gram

As an occasional hiker, Louis knows that the weight of the backpacks can take a toll on the group’s morale. So no tent or sleeping bag (the family stays in hotels or inns), and a packing list limited to the bare essentials. Among his must-haves:

• Good shoes for everyone (often at the expense of style), and a pair of flip-flops
• Marseille soap, to wash your hands, disinfect a wound, or wash a T-shirt
• Small foldable backpacks 18 liters (150 g), for days when you don't need a big bag
• A water bottle, a cup, and utensils Everyone, to avoid using disposable dishes
• Ways to purify water : a Steripen and Micropur tablets
• Things to Do : a deck of cards, dice, a Toy Battle set (with printed, lighter-weight game boards), colored pencils, and a watercolor brush
• Enough to do a little schoolwork : an all-in-one workbook or textbook for each boy, and parent guides for 5th grade, 7th grade, and 10th grade in Louis's backpack

The entire matter was carefully negotiated with the key stakeholders:

“After much back-and-forth (“Dad, do you think I should get these underwear, which weigh 38 g, or those ones, which I like better, that weigh 46 g?”), we end up with: Louis 8.9 kg, Romain 7 kg, Armand 4.5 kg, Jean 5.3 kg.” — Louis

Of course, these weights do not include what each person is carrying—clothes and shoes—which adds another 1.5 to 2.1 kg.

Another topic of negotiation: screens.

“For the kids, it was a tough battle, and I’d say it was more of a defeat. I wanted them to have nothing—or almost nothing—and, to put it bluntly, they would have wanted an iPhone 18…” — Louis

Final compromise: one device each, mainly for music and photos, which stayed at the bottom of their bags most of the time, except in the evenings when they used them to chat with their friends. The full list can be found at the "Our Bags" page on the blog.

A trip back in time in Nantes: everyone is ready to go with the bag they’ll be carrying for the entire trip

4 months—is that the ideal length of time?

For Louis, the answer is yes:

“Four months is a good amount of time—it lets you take a long trip and completely unplug, without the kids missing too much school (less than two months) and without the sometimes legitimate urge to beat each other up becoming too strong. But even 2 or 3 months is enough time for a wonderful trip.” — Louis

The pace, for its part, was brisk : Rarely more than 2 days in one place, with a maximum of 4 days in major cities like Tokyo, Beijing, or Hong Kong. This was a deliberate choice to see everything within the allotted time, even though this approach left less room for the unexpected and chance encounters.

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Family rail travel: a 4-month tour of Europe

What Louis takes away from it: the extended stay and warm encounters

First observation: no safety issues in four months. No assaults, no thefts, and no aggressive behavior. The only downsides noted by Louis were a few services—often car rides—for which they were charged a bit too much, and the very frequent lack of seat belts in the back seats.

On the contrary, it was the warm welcome that made the biggest impression on him:

“The vast majority of the people we met, in every country we visited, were warm and curious, smiling, and generous… It made us reflect on our own sense of hospitality here in France…” — Louis

And then there’s that experience unique to overland travel—the sense of time stretching out: watching landscapes and climates transform, and languages, accents, and faces change as the kilometers go by. Louis is amazed to discover that each country is a world unto itself, with its own architecture, culture, language, and currency, and that life can be very different on one side of a border compared to the other.

The only limitation he points out is that without a personal vehicle, it’s harder to get away from cities and major rail hubs to explore off the beaten path. Buses and minibuses, however, remain a good option.

Wonderful encounters—on a train in Tibet (left) or in a restaurant in Japan (right)

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From Paris to Bangkok by train: itinerary, budget and practical tips

A Final Word

From the Cyclades to the Gobi Desert, Louis returns home in awe of the Earth’s beauty and diversity. But he is also deeply affected by what he saw along the way: the homogenization of cities and lifestyles, concrete everywhere, monocultures, illegal dumping (except in Japan), plastic… Alongside this are echoes of the “apocalyptic” summer—in his own words—that Europe was experiencing. A lucid assessment, which he concludes with a call to action :

"It's not fun, but that's the way it is. Now we have to roll up our sleeves and do everything we can to change that." — Louis

To relive the journey step by step, with Louis's writings and Armand's videos and photos, visit The Family Blog: From Nantes to Tokyo, and on The trip recap article.

Written by Sophie Renassia

Issue du monde de la communication et des médias, Sophie est Responsable éditoriale chez HOURRAIL ! depuis août 2024. Elle est notamment derrière le contenu éditorial du site ainsi que La Locomissive (de l'inspiration voyage bas carbone et des bons plans, un jeudi sur deux, gratuitement dans ta boîte mail !).

Convaincue que les changements d’habitude passent par la transformation de nos imaginaires, elle s’attache à montrer qu’il est possible de voyager autrement, de manière plus consciente, plus lente et plus joyeuse. Son objectif : rendre le slow travel accessible à toutes et tous, à travers des astuces, des décryptages et surtout, de nouveaux récits.

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