Walter Stolle's Bicycle Saga, or Around the World in 18 Years. When he was a teenager, Walter Stolle got a crazy idea. “I decided,” he recalls, “that I would make the longest journey ever on a bike.” He did. It covered 400,000 miles—the equivalent of 16 trips around the world—took him to 159 countries and lasted 18 years.

Why did I start cycling? Why did I decide to travel around the world and why did I not stop? These are the questions that I have been asked most often since I started to travel around the world by bicycle almost 50 years ago. I was 20 when I decided to take a bicycle trip, searching for adventure and with the desire to discover the world. That trip lasted two years. When I returned to my hometown in Germany, I realized that I didn't especially like my work and I wondered why I had to spend the rest of my life doing something that did not really interest me. Then I realized that I was much more interested in discovering the world.