Late August, Finland: that's Anita on the left, and myself in the red anorak. Anita's boyfriend Hannu, and their friend Marja, who I will always remember as keeping pet snails in her apartment. Marja claimed that she would let the snails run wild across the slick expanse of her shower's tiled walls.

inland was the northernmost extent of that 1987 round-the-world trip. My main reason for including Finland — other than the obvious "why not" — was to visit with my friend and long-time penpal Anita Kokkila.

Anita and I had met in 1980 when chance threw us together on the same train travelling through Italy to Brindisi. I was heading to Corfu at that time, and then on to Istanbul and Crete. Anita was travelling on her own through the "heel" of Italy. We exchanged addresses and are in touch to this very day.

I reached Finland after an extended ride from Denmark's west coast to Copenhagen, and then across the south of Sweden (pedalling along beautiful hard-packed dirt roads through deciduous forests) to Stockholm. There's a night ferry across the Baltic Sea to Helsinki, where Anita had generously given up her apartment to me for the duration of my stay. You can't imagine how luxurious that felt: my own kitchen and bathroom; a record player and records; even the occasional piece of mail from home!

From Finland I carried on to India, backtracking first to Copenhagen where I caught my onward flight to New Delhi with a stop in Rome. The only part of India I knew I had to see was Ladakh. The rest of that amazing continent I was willing to leave to chance.