At 8am on 22nd April 1884, Thomas Stevens set out from San Francisco to travel around the world - on a penny-farthing bicycle. His route for this unique journey of nearly three years' duration took him to Boston, from where he sailed to Liverpool, and then through Europe to Constantinople, Egypt, India, Hong Kong, Japan and China. A journalist and an instinctive observer, Stevens recorded the different customs of the countries through which he passed with understanding, humanity and sometimes an outraged sense of natural justice. Negotiating rotten roads and facing hostility and setbacks with humour and dogged endurance, he kept the wheels of his extraordinary mount turning, and survived to write this account of his experiences. Stevens was born in 1855 at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire and moved to America in 1871. As a newspaper correspondent he achieved fame as the first journalist to meet Sir Henry Stanley on his long trek to the coast of East Africa.