A loaded touring bicycle propped on a sea wall above a bay, with mountains behind

64,000 kilometres, 5 continents, and one word: peace.

The first Iranians to ride around the world.

Nice, France

The Journey

Two friends, two bicycles, four years and three months of road.

The first Iranians to ride around the world, told by one of the two who did it.

In the late summer of 2000, Hassan Alizadeh and his closest friend Amir Hossein Ahmadi rode out of Iran towards the Pakistani border carrying a single message: peace. They came home on 6 December 2004, having crossed 5 continents by bicycle and ridden 64,000 kilometres of the way.

Read the whole story

The Journey in Numbers

What four years and three months on a bicycle adds up to.

64,000

Kilometres ridden

Continents

Months on the road

Countries

What You Get

Inside the books.

The whole route, country by country

43 countries in the order he rode them, from the south-eastern border of Iran all the way back to it.

See the route

The coin rule

At every fork and every argument they tossed a coin and obeyed it, for four years and three months, even when it was wrong.

Flip it yourself

Photographs from the road

181 across the two books, from a roadside puncture in Portland to the crowd that carried them home.

See the photographs

The Documentary

There is a film of it.

Behrooz Afrakhan followed the ride and made a documentary of it, narrated in part by Behrouz Vossoughi. Ten minutes of the two of them actually on the road.

Watch the film