Across Asia on a Bicycle: The Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking

In 1890, two recent American college graduates did something that had never been done: they hopped on their bicycles and set out to circle the globe. Four years and 15,000 miles later, they rolled into Peking having completed what was then the longest continuous land journey ever made. Allen and his companion pedaled through Ottoman Turkey, Persia, the wild reaches of Turkestan, and northern China - places almost no Westerners had ever seen. They learned languages on the fly, fixed their own broken wheels in remote villages, and relied on the generosity of strangers who had never encountered a bicycle. The narrative crackles with the electricity of genuine encounter: hostile crowds in Anatolia, astonishing hospitality in Persian villages, the terrifying emptiness of the Silk Road. What makes this book endure is not the adventure alone, but its sincere desire to understand rather than simply record. Two young men on the eve of the modern age, pedaling into a world that still moved at the speed of horse and foot. This is travel writing before tourism existed, when crossing borders meant something.