A voyage from Britain to India took between three to four months; ships stopped at St Helena in the western Atlantic, the Cape of Good Hope, Aden or Socotra (Yemen), before finally reaching Bombay. There was the unexpected too, not least the prospect of shipboard romances.

Historically, the journey from England to India evolved from a perilous six-month sea voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in the 1600s to a two-week transit following the Suez Canal's opening in 1869. By the mid-20th century, "Imperial Airways" introduced multi-day flight paths with numerous stops. In 2026, travel is a seamless 9-to-10-hour non-stop flight from London Heathrow to major hubs like Delhi or Mumbai. Modern travelers can also choose one-stop connections through Middle Eastern hubs like Dubai or Doha. For a nostalgic "slow-travel" experience, niche luxury tours in 2026 still offer rail-and-sea itineraries that trace the old "Raj" routes, but for the vast majority, the journey is now an overnight hop on a Boeing 787 or Airbus A350, a far cry from the months of isolation faced by early merchants and soldiers of the East India Company.