Host hopping mesh network over LOR or ZigBee
My background is voice and data communications.  In the 1980s I worked at Ungermann Bass (Worlds Largest Networking Co. in those days) and worked on emerging network protocols like Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI.

ZigBee has been around since the 1990s.  Is supported by established reputable companies. Is an IEE802 standard.  But it will not work for you with a range of kilometers.

LoRa has been around nearly two years.  It's a hodgepodge mesh mess. These sorts of things take more than two years to be truly usable and interchangeable. A networking protocol would be a good thing to have.

Yes you can buy a LoRA board. It can transmit and receive data.  That's it.  No networking protocol.  It's a toy.

Two of the ZigBee Alliance Members I checked out, TI and Silicon Labs, both have said they will not be supporting LoRa. 

In my looking around I found this interesting product at Silicon Labs.
I did not check into it further but it supports IEEE 802.15.4g.  ZigBee on a 433Mhz radio transceiver. Interesting.
The have development kits around $300, some transceiver boards are $55.

Silicon Labs' EZRadioPRO



The Toys 


Adafruit  
Indestructables  
SparkFun