Life of a Victorian adventuress: Incredible story of clergyman's daughter who braved malaria, floods and wars to trek across China

Just in their twenties and living off a shoestring budget, three young Parsis, one from Baroda, ventured on the first ever trip around the world on bicycles on October 15, 1923. The trio covered 44,000 miles in three years and three months across 27 countries and four continents. On their return, Adi Hakim from Vadodara, Jal Bapasola from Mumbai and Rustom Bhumgara from Pune, who later became a freedom fighter, wrote a book of their memoirs from the epic journey, of which but a few copies still exist. The original book includes a foreword by Jawarharlal Nehru and comments from leaders around the world like Benito Mussolini and Calvin Coolidge.”

Fred Birchmore’s Amazing Bicycle Trip Around the World. The American cyclist crossed paths with Sonja Henje and Adolf Hitler as he transversed the globe on Bucephalus, his trusty bike

If, on the 13th of November, 1889, some amateur prophet had foretold that I should spend Christmas Day of that year in the Indian Ocean, I hope I should not by any open and insulting incredulity have added new burdens to the trials of a hard-working soothsayer – I hope I should, with the gentleness due a severe case of aberrated predictiveness, have merely called his attention to that passage in the Koran in which it is written, "The Lord loveth a cheerful liar" – and bid him go in peace. Yet I did spend the 25th day of December steaming through the waters that wash the shores of the Indian Empire, and did do other things equally preposterous, of which I would not have believed myself capable if forewarned of them. I can only claim in excuse that these vagaries were unpremeditated, for the prophets neglected their opportunity and I received no augury.