The idea of cycle touring came to me as I was comfortably sat in a reclining seat and looking through the tinted windows of an air-conditioned coach. Out of the Turkish landscape I was travelling through at the time appeared flickering images of a country I felt my immediate surroundings were detaching me from. Women in colourful headscarfs working in the fields, smiling faces of children waving from the roadside, old men sitting at small cafes playing backgammon as they smoked and drank tea They came into sight then disappeared like a slideshow on a setting too fast.

        It's the same way I'm sure many cycle tourers feel. Enclosed behind a glass screen and taken from point A to point B, automated travel often misses so many of the curious realities of a country that lie between the main tourist sites and their touts. It can be frustrating. And so I realised during that bus journey, without ever cycling continuously for more than a few days at most, what a great method of travel the bicycle provided.

        Since that Turkish trip nearly four years ago I've thought a lot about a big cycle tour - at least one longer than a two week break from work, where time constraints inevitably dictate the pace and the places one can go. After purchasing a bike and some panniers I was ready (or at least making preparations) for setting off two years ago. But then I found out that a long awaited application I'd made to teach English in Japan was successful. The cycling had been my plan B at the time, and lacking finances for more than what would have only been several months on the road, I put the bicycle journey off.

        A one year contract has turned into two here in Japan, but the desire for undertaking that 'big trip' has never faded. I finish my teaching contract at the end of July this year (2005) and the cycling this time around has become my plan A.