In 1992, window cleaner Jason Lewis set out from the Greenwich Meridian Line to become the first person to circle the globe using only the power of the human body with no assistance from motors or sails. Biking, hiking, rollerskating, kayaking, swimming, rowing and pedalling over land and seas, his world record-making 46,505-mile journey took him 13 years and into the Guinness Book of World Records. In an extract from his book, he recalls the early days of his very big adventure ...

AUGUST, 1992. My old college pal Steve Smith and I were slumped on the kitchen floor of his flat in Paris, drinking Kronenbourg 1664 at two in the morning. A map of the world lay between us, paddled by the slowly revolving shadow of an ornate ceiling fan that gave the apartment an air of French colonial panache. Steve had just pitched the most ingenious, hair-brained, inspirational, irresponsible, guaranteed-to-give-your-mother-a-cardiac-arrest idea I had ever heard: a human-powered circumnavigation of the globe …

Those few words hung suspended in air like a spell, putting goose bumps on my skin. To travel as far as you can go over land and sea, to the very ends of the Earth itself, under your own steam. No motors or sails. Just the power of the human body to get you there and back again. It had to be the ultimate human challenge. As Steve continued outlining his plan, my head filled with wildly romantic images: riding bicycles across the barren steppes of Central Asia, trekking through the frozen wastes of the Himalayas, staring into the flames of a roaring campfire after a hard day hacking through the Amazonian rainforest. What about the oceans? I wondered. Rowing? Swimming? Paddling a boogie board?

And why was Steve asking me of all people to join him? I had absolutely no experience as a so-called “adventurer”, I owned a window-cleaning business, for Christ’s sake.

I shot Steve a sidelong look. “You sure you want me as your expedition partner?” He nodded. “And it’ll take around three years to complete you say?”

“If we can find sponsorship.”

“OK, I’ll do it,” I said.

Steve grinned. “Great!”

“There is, however, one other question I have before signing on the dotted line.” I stabbed at the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on the map. “These blue areas –”

“Yes! Yes! The big wet bits,” he interrupted enthusiastically.

“Right, the um … big wet bits. How do we get across those then?”

“Easy. We’ll kayak.

“You’re crazy. Neither of us has kayaked before.”

“Oh s***, Jase. How hard can it be? I mean, all you gotta do is go like this, and we’ll get there eventually.” And with these reassuring words, he lurched to his feet and began whirling his arms around his head in the manner of a paddling kayaker. I roared with laughter. “I was wrong. You’re not crazy. You’re insane!”

Clearly, neither of us had any idea of what we were getting into. But, as we found ourselves reminding each other frequently from that point on, lack of experience isn’t a good enough reason not to try. Besides, as the sagacious old comic strip character Hagar the Horrible once noted, “Ignorance is the mother of all adventure.” And if I’d known what I was letting myself in for, I probably would have never agreed to join.

JULY, 1994. I awoke in darkness, disoriented, seagulls screeching overhead, salt smarting in my nostrils. I lay there in my sleeping bag, blinking at the shadows, letting the smell of the sea remind me where I was and what was I supposed to be doing.

Ah yes, of course. Circumnavigating the world by human power ... Something was buffeting and grinding against the stone quay beside me. Moksha, my 26ft-long wooden pedalo, was yawing at her mooring lines in the languid slop of the harbour of the east Sussex port town of Rye, anxious to get going. Within the hour, Steve and I would be pedalling across the Channel – one of the busiest waterways in the world, with its powerful tides and inshore currents, variable winds and innumerable obstacles.

Even if successful, we could look forward to being arrested on the other side, according to the French Coast Guard. Operating “unorthodox craft” – anything without a motor or a sail – was strictly illegal inside French territorial waters. The ruling made sense to prevent nitwits from paddling bathtubs or air mattresses into the paths of hundred-thousand-tonne super tankers. But for us, with a fully registered ocean-going vessel and support craft as accompaniment, it was ridiculous.

A fearful row had erupted over the whole affair leading up to our departure. The Dover Coast Guard appeared on national television, accusing Steve and I of foolhardiness for potentially costing the British taxpayer thousands of pounds and endangering the lives of those sent out to rescue us.

Our response was to point out that if a monopoly over the Channel had always been surrendered to international shipping, we would all be speaking Spanish by now, the Armada having swept through in 1588 and invaded Britain unchallenged.

Unsurprisingly, our appeal to patriotic idiosyncrasy was ignored, and permission to leave from Dover summarily refused. Sneaking out from the less trafficked Rye nearly doubled the distance, dramatically increasing the odds against us with all the variables at play. But if we were intercepted leaving Dover, the expedition would effectively be over before it had even begun.

Half an hour later, the eastern sky tinged a lighter shade of blackened steel and a small crowd assembled on the wharf for last farewells.

My parents stood stiffly to seaward, hair whipping in the breeze, expressions faithfully masking a cornucopia of suppressed fears and confusion as to why their only son was about to disappear over the horizon in something little bigger than a broom cupboard. My mother managed to hold it together until we embraced. Then her eyes welled.

Sensing I was about to lose it myself, I turned to the ladder leading down to Moksha. “Better get going,” I sniffed.

Harbour breakwater safely astern, I aimed Moksha’s nose at the French coast and flung myself at the pedals. The chain turned with a sharp urgency – zzzzrrr ... zzzzrrr ... zzzzrrr – the bow slicing through the calm water. Aside from a dull morning haze, the conditions were near perfect.

I turned to Steve. “How did your mum do with the farewells? Distraught?”

“No, stiff upper lip. I think she’d been to see one of her clairvoyants and found out I’m going to be OK.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No. But I figured she had, otherwise she’d be a lot more worried!”

I smiled. “Pass us a beer would you.”

On October 6, 2007, Jason Lewis successfully completed his 4,833-day expedition, having travelled 46,505 miles. Steve Smith, who with Lewis completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from mainland Europe to North America by human power in 1995, left the expedition in Hawaii. He later said the expedition’s success showed “that ordinary people, filled with passion and helped by others, can accomplish the most extraordinary things”.

This is an edited extract from Dark Waters (The Expedition Trilogy, Book 1): True Story of the First Human-Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth by

Jason Lewis, published by BillyFish Books, £9.99

Jason Lewis will be speaking about his books – and his incredible journey – at the Boswell Book Festival on Saturday, May 13 at 12 noon. The Sunday Herald is the festival’s media partner. For tickets and full programme details visit

www.boswellbookfestival.co.uk