Which country's largest city is furthest in distance from its capital city?

22crows

Having worked through the list below, it seems that India has won the gold medal (Mumbai - New Delhi), closely followed by Vietnam (Ho Chi Min City - Hanoi) for silver, and Pakistan picking up bronze for Karachi - Islamabad. Distances varied according to how measured (as the crow flies, or by established route). As the crow flies, Mumbai to New Delhi is 719.53 miles or 1157.94 kilometres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_whose_capital_is_not_their_largest_city http://www.mapcrow.info/Distance_between_New_Delhi_IN_and_Mumbai_IN.html Aug 09 12, 1:14 AM

sportsherald

Interesting question, and a bit of a challenge. Starting from the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_whose_capital_is_not_their_largest_city, one would answer this question by looking carefully for some of the larger countries within it, as having the best opportunity for wide separation of these cities: e,g, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, United States, Vietnam, etc. Finding no ready-made table of their separation distances, one then would use a website like http://www.travelmath.com/flying-distance/ to obtain those distances (as the crow flies). By this methodology, India's Mumbai wins, at 1155 kilometres from its capital, New Dehli. This edges out Islamabad-Karachi, Pakistan and Ho Chi Minh City-Hanoi, Vietnam, both at 1141 km apart, and Shanghai-Beijing, China at 1089 km apart. A very close race, subject to quibbles on which points to measure from! Technically, Johannesburg-Cape Town, South Africa could be termed the winner, at 1264 km apart, except that South Africa has 3 capitals (Cape Town (legislative), Bloemfontein (judicial) and Pretoria (administrative)), and Pretoria is only 62 km from Johannesburg. I had gone into this expecting Sao Paulo-Brasilia, Brazil might win, but they are "only" 869 km apart. Aug 09 12, 1:19 AM