If, on the 13th of November, 1889, some amateur prophet had foretold that I should spend Christmas Day of that year in the Indian Ocean, I hope I should not by any open and insulting incredulity have added new burdens to the trials of a hard-working soothsayer – I hope I should, with the gentleness due a severe case of aberrated predictiveness, have merely called his attention to that passage in the Koran in which it is written, "The Lord loveth a cheerful liar" – and bid him go in peace. Yet I did spend the 25th day of December steaming through the waters that wash the shores of the Indian Empire, and did do other things equally preposterous, of which I would not have believed myself capable if forewarned of them. I can only claim in excuse that these vagaries were unpremeditated, for the prophets neglected their opportunity and I received no augury.

If you happen to see two backpack-toting white men doing some serious walking, chances are they are the globe-trotting French guys who have been walking for the past six years in a journey of a lifetime through many countries that has now brought them to Malaysia.

Sono partiti. Sono montati in sella alla loro bicicletta e hanno iniziato il loro percorso che li porterà a visitare diversi paesi, fino ad arrivare in India.