Distance: 20,000 km (12,500 miles)
Duration: 15 months

By now expert at oceanic hitch-hiking, Steve somehow blags his way to Timor for the start of the journey’s longest kick – Asia via an Indonesian island hop: Timor, boat, Flores, skiff, Sumbawa, raft, Lombok, dinghy, Bali. Afterwards volcanic Java and its big brother, Sumatra, crossing the Equator for the fourth and final time. Then on to Singapore: an antiseptic, drop-that-butt-and-you’re-nicked return to the Eurasian landmass (no more boats required).

Up peninsular Malaysia and through the bottleneck of southern Thailand; right turn to Cambodia, past Angkor Wat and into landlocked Laos. Next, Vietnam and a humid heave north to the Chinese border. Kunming, Yunnan Province. A little hamlet by Chinese standards: population 6 million. Ahead, the biggest challenge of all: month after month of tortuous crawls uphill followed by jubilant freewheels down. The Himalayas – terrestrial Gods.

Follow the Mekong up through the pine forests of Sichuan’s ‘Cut Across’ Mountains – Hengduan Shan – and onto the Tibetan Plateau, 1,000 miles through the purplest bit on the map: Chomolungma, yak’s milk for breakfast and Buddhist monks in burgundy cowls.

Down into the badlands of Sinkiang and a painful pilgrimage through the windswept void of the Taklamakan Desert. Quite bored of cycling now, but with a backside like steel, Steve arrives in Kashgar, bellicose trading post of the old Silk Road, and veers due west towards Asia’s many ‘stans. Above the Pamir – Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan – and from Tashkent to the land of the Kazakhs, an unexplored giant, greater in area than Western Europe. Huge expanses of empty landscape, the very definition of wilderness. Sweeping a curve north of the Aral Sea (if any of it’s left by then) and round the Caspian. Towards the world’s most ambiguous continental border. And Russia.

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