Primary Objective: To cycle from Korea to Cape Town via the Middle East and the west coast of Africa.

Secondary Objective: To Climb in the Himalayas, to sail on the Congo and to visit Timbuktu.

The First Silly Idea:

I have always gone against professional medical advice preferring the 'it'll be alright' method of recuperation. This, unsurprisingly, has led me to do some monumentally daft things while my body wasn't really up to it. I've run marathons with stress fractures in my shins and ankles; I've played game the day after separating my shoulder, the list goes on. However, with my most recent injury it was made abundantly clear (in two languages-I was playing rugby in the south of France at the time) that snapping my medial and anterior cruciate ligament was a serious matter. So much so that I was even persuaded to let them operate-something I have avoided like the plague for the fear of weakening the joint (quite ironic in the end!). The operation was a complete success and I'm rather proud of myself for sticking to the rehab schedule and not flying up through the weights in my usual 'superman syndrome' way. The thing with not playing rugby and using the gently, gently slowly, slowly technique for rehab it does free up an inordinate amount of time for getting hideously drunk and coming up with ludicrous ideas for challenges. One such challenge was to have a beer in every pub in the Frog and Rosbif chain in 24hrs; this was completed with 2minutes to spare having crossed three countries, 1000's of miles, four cities and a time zone. This culminated in a friend of mine running ahead of me to the last pub through Paris on Nuit Blanche (busy night) closely followed by a random German, who I'd met in a pub and persuaded to drive, and me hobbling after the two of them two weeks after my operation.

The Second Silly Idea:

Another thing idea popped into my head whilst on this pub crawl was from a conversation I'd had the year before with a friend Tom Hopgood. He'd been traveling through South America when he met a guy cycling through South America. This got us thinking that we, two relatively able bodied chaps could do something similar. After a few more beers this had developed into cycling from London to Cape Town through the Middle East. At the time we had dismissed it as his career was just starting to take off and I had other plans. When this idea popped back into my mind I again dismissed it-I had after all just had a serious knee operation. However; this time it wouldn't go away and when I was told that cycling is the ideal rehabilitation for this type of injury I was sold. I don't think the doctors meant 10,000 miles across terrains varying from the Alps to the Sahara-but my mind was made up.

Cycling from London to Cape Town Turned out to be one of the more foolish things I've ever done. For starters I hate cycling, and I knew this before I left, I don't really like foreign food. I don't like being on my own, I like sleeping in my own bed at home, I don't like the heat, the list goes on and on. However; I did make it. And now I miss the challenge. I spent 9months away from the world that I knew and it was tough, but I miss the toughness, I miss not knowing if I'll make it to the next town by nightfall, I miss not knowing if that town will have food/water/bandits in it. At the end of the last bike ride I decided to work in Korea, I thought it would be interesting, I thought it would be different and difficult.

The Third (and final) Silly Idea:

Sadly it's not, well not by comparison to cycling anyway so I'm off on another trip. The plus side of Korea is that it does pay ridiculously well so I've managed to hoard some money together. It's also in a good position globally-it is in the Far East. A lot of routes took my fancy; cycling south through south-east Asia and then getting the ferry across to Australia and biking round that; cycling north and getting a boat across to North America and heading south to Cape Horn; cycling west across Mongolia, Russia and through Europe back to home. But there is no more challenging continent than Africa and every route seemed like a step down in intensity from my last trip. That is except one. Korea to Cape Town: the Axis of Evil by Bike. Now this sounds dramatic and it's going to be hard, harder than anything I've ever done before and in all likeliness I will fail, but I think that's why I want to do it.

The planned route, and I must stress that this is a planned route as so many things will change between now and when I start, but here it is:

I'll start from my school in Bundang, South Korea and cycle to the DMZ then stop and get the bus back to the airport (the border between North and South Korea is closed-fly to Beijing. From Beijing I will try to fly or take the train into North Korea and do as much cycling as the guides will allow me to (which won't be much!) and then leave North Korea, hopefully by the land border with China to the north at Dandong.

From here I will head west to Lhasa in Tibet-probably going via Beijing, Xi'an and Chengdu.

From Lhasa I will head into Nepal and go to Kathmandu. I'm going to try and do some climbing here-maybe Ama Dablam or more likely Island Peak, this may have to be scrapped as I will be arriving in mid winter. Crossing the Himalaya in mid winter will be tricky enough and I think I'll want to just get down into India and marginally warmer climbs!

From Kathmandu I head south into India to Patna then west to Delhi via Kanpur.

Delhi to Islamabad in Pakistan.

Islamabad to Kabul in Afghanistan.

Kabul to Herat.

Herat to Tehran in Iran via Mashhad or Neyshabur.

Tehran to Tabriz.

Tabriz to Arbil in Iraq and then on to Mosul.

Mosul to Damascus in Syria via Aleppo.

Damascus to Amman in Jordan.

Amman to Cairo in Eygpt taking the ferry across the Gulf of Aqaba.

Cairo to Tripoli in Libya (I may have to pay for an official tour guide to come with me through this bit).

Tripoli to Tunis in Tunisia.

Tunis to Algiers in Algeria.

Algiers to Oran.

Oran to Fes in Morocco (probably via Spain for a week of relaxing and the fact that the Algeria/Morocco border is closed).

Fes to Casablanca (of all the gin joints in all the world…)

Casablanca to Nouakchott in Mauritania.

Nouakchott to Accra in Ghana probably via Bamako in Mali and Bobo Diou-lasso or Ouagadougou in Burkino Faso then south down through Ghana. The other route would be following the coast down through Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire.

From Accra I will try to stay along the coast all the way to Cape Town in South Africa. This will probably involve going through Lome in Togo, Porto-Navo in Benin, Lagos in Nigeria, Youande in Cameroon, Libreville in Gabon, Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luanda in Angola and Windhoek in Namibia. On the whole I will try to avoid capital/large cities, but they are a necessary evil if I want to get visas!

Like I said earlier-this is a provisional route and I know there will be a lot of people who think I am insane for even thinking about this route or that it's an elaborate way to commit suicide. I can assure it is not. The route does go through several countries that most people wouldn't think about traveling through but I'm sure it goes through several countries that most people didn't know existed (come on admit it-who'd heard of Burkino Faso and Gabon?). From what little I've seen in my life it's the fear of the unknown that people worry about-it's not something I fear. I inherently trust most people but have always gone with my gut reaction on people and it's only had me robbed twice and thrown in jail for murder once! What am I doing?!