Starting in Colombo at the foot of the sub-continent we’ll ride up to Bombay (modern day Mumbai), then head north through Gujarat, Rajasthan and the Punjab regions of India and then across Kashmir and into Pakistan, intersecting the Karakorum Highway north east of Islamabad. A quick diversion to Peshawar and a trip up the Khyber Pass to the Afghanistan border is a must, before retracing our tracks and heading over the Kunjerab Pass to Yarkand on the southern edge of the Taklamakan desert. From here we can head south again up on to the Pamir and to Rutog, Tibet. Roads lead then south-east to Lhasa and once we’ve traversed Shangri La it’s out the eastern end of Tibet into the Junnan Province where we head to its southern border with Myanmur (once was Burma) at Ruili.

Having begun on the plains of India and climbed the Himalaya to the Pamir, the challenge is then to descend and traverse the tropical jungles of South East Asia. From Myanmur the route passes into Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia Thailand and Malaysia before exiting at Singapore. So we arrive finally in the East Indies, the riches of which were highlighted in the tales of Marco Polo and sparked Europe’s period of sea exploration. The efforts of Columbus, Magellan and Da Gama blazed sea paths to this destination both east and west from Europe. In so doing the great trade routes were well and truly established.