(INCIPIT)
Prima di iniziare il racconto di questo giro del mondo, è molto importante spiegarne il motivo e mettere chiaramente al corrente il lettore della nostra impresa.

John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe. These words are written on the inside cover of the notebook from which the contents of this volume have been taken. They reflect the mood in which the late author and explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago. No less does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, which might have startled any finder of the book, reveal the temper and the comprehensiveness of Mr. Muir s mind. He never was and never could be a parochial student of nature. Even at the early age of twenty-nine his eager interest in every aspect of the natural world had made him a citizen of the universe. 

Alan Booth (5 December 1946 – 24 January 1993) was an English travel writer who wrote two books on his journeys on foot through the Japanese countryside. The better-known of the two, The Roads to Sata (published in 1985) is about his travels (in 1977) from the northernmost cape in Hokkaidō (Cape Soya) to the southern tip of Kyūshū in Cape Sata. The second, Looking for the Lost, was published posthumously in 1995. Booth also wrote a guidebook to Japan as well as numerous articles on Japan and other topics.

Nel 2003 la BBC trasmise Meet the Stans, una serie in quattro episodi sull'Asia centrale scritta e diretta da Simon Reeve. La realizzazione della serie portò Reeve a visitare il Kazakistan, il Kirghizistan, il Tagikistan e l'Uzbekistan, alla ricerca delle città legendarie della Via della seta, Samarcanda e Bukhara.