A lone cyclist on a long-distance journey across countries around the world. Image Credits: Alastair Humphrey/ Flickr.
Humphreys’ bike had taken him to 60 different countries on five continents within 1,555 days of travel, which was recorded in Humphreys’ expedition diary. In November 2005, Humphreys returned to Britain at age 28. Humphreys travelled for four years and covered 45,000 miles, while Humphreys said his final total was 46,000 miles, according to The Guardian. What started as a 24-year-old’s decision to leave Yorkshire and see what was beyond his doorstep eventually became a four-year journey across much of the world. By the time Humphreys returned home, his bicycle had taken him through 60 countries and across landscapes that could hardly have been more different.
When Humphreys undertook his last ride in Europe, four years had already passed since he started riding his bike away from Yorkshire. The ride had ended, but the experience had turned a simple urge to explore into a remarkable story of life on the road.
On a summer morning in 2001, Alastair Humphreys left his home in Yorkshire on a bicycle with a deceptively simple plan: keep riding until he had travelled around the world. He was 24 and had recently finished his studies, but instead of settling into a conventional career, he chose to spend the next several years on the road. What began as an ambitious idea became a 46,000-mile journey through 60 countries and five continents, lasting more than four years.
Because he could not cycle across the oceans, unlike a simple nonstop circuit of the globe, Humphreys’ journey included several sea crossings. He had to undertake trips across the oceans by ship where it was not possible to cycle and other routes due to geographical factors. After landing in Alaska, Humphreys sailed via a freighter across the Pacific Ocean to the east coast of Siberia. Thereafter, the bicycle was used to travel around the rest of Russia and into Asia. The Siberia leg was again an extreme environment. Humphreys travelled from the extreme heat of Africa to the extreme cold of Russia.
