Writing the Book
The first part of the adventure was a five-month bicycle ride from London to Istanbul. That bicycle ride was one of the pivotal experiences of my life – it put some ideas into my head which, both during and after that phase of the journey, I attempted to communicate when interpreting what I saw.
In the spring of 2006 (for reasons described in the book) I was left at something of a global loose end. At about the same time (for reasons also described) I realised that communicating a way of thinking about the world through 500-word diary entries wasn’t getting my point across.
So I decided to articulate those ideas systematically. That choice catalysed a process which soon became self-sustaining and self-reinforcing and from then on, one thing kept leading to another. At first I didn’t grasp where it was taking me, but ultimately it set me on a path that, in July 2011, gave rise to a book: The Jolly Pilgrim.
