Distance: 15,500 km (9680 miles)
Duration: 9 months

Along the Lycian Coast to Syria, then south along the River Jordan, past Petra – this piece of Asia just a stepping-stone, a land-bridge to Africa and the hubbub of Cairo.

Six months older, hirsute of face and sickeningly fit, Steve points his front wheel south and plunges into a world of tropical heat, all manner of toothsome fauna and the prospect of less salubrious terrain. Lots of sand at first probably, skirting the eastern shores of the Sahara, riding against the flow of the Nile. From the pyramids of Egypt to Khartoum, where the mighty river splits into white and blue – then trace the crescent of the Great Rift Valley: Ethiopia and Kenya. Swing a right at the top of Lake Victoria and a quick triple jump through Uganda and the cloud forests of Rwanda and Burundi (steer clear of the Congolese border if you can bud).

Through west Tanzania’s savannah-land before pootling down the long west bank of Lake Malawi where Steve will be forced to stop awhile by his friend Henry who will not take ‘no, I have a schedule to keep’ for an answer. Bottles chinked and power of conversation restored, plough on into Mozambique (Zimbabwe perhaps if Mugabe’s day is done). Then South Africa via little Lesotho just because it is there. Steve will arrive in Cape Town. Using ingenuity, persuasive semaphore and maybe some bribes, Steve will cadge a lift in a boat across the Atlantic. Flights don’t come into it on this trip. That would be too easy; though the change of transportation will come as a relief no doubt (there had been talk of manufacturing some peddle-boat contraption for watery stretches, mercifully long since dismissed).

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