Connecting two Lora modules ad hoc has always been possible.
The catch is you won't be part of the LoraWan network.
You are only feeding Semtech, the Microsoft of Lora, which has the patents on basic information encoding/decoding.
The only gateways you can have which listen on multiple channels are damn expensive.
Isn't LoRa basically just intended to be used one-way/upstream, i.e "node --> gateway --> end-device"? What am I missing?
See ttnmapper.org for the level of coverage and https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/network/architecture.h... for an explanation of "downlink" return messages