Cyclist finds a world full of friends

Readers of these pages may remember from last spring the story of a young Japanese man, Yasuyuki Ozeki, who was resolved to cycle from Japan to Ireland. And it will be no news to regular listeners to 2FM's Gerry Ryan show that Yasuyuki is, indeed, on his way.

He left on April 15th, and so far, he has cycled the whole way across China, through Mongolia, across the Gobi Desert, and across some great distance of the former Soviet Union. Now, he is heading for Moscow. Every so often he stops to phone Ireland to talk to his sponsors, Bridgestone, to let them know he is still alive, or the Gerry Ryan show, or The Irish Times. Strikingly guileless, and blessed with an infectious smile, Yasuyuki seems to be surviving by making his own luck - and lots of friends. In Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, he stayed with two volunteers from the Christina Noble foundation.

When he turned up at the Irish embassy in Beijing he was introduced to Conor O'Clery, The Irish Times's China Correspondent; in Russia, he stayed with O'Clery's mother-in-law and when his bicycle broke some several hundred miles on, he got on a train back to the city of "my Russian mother" to get it fixed; there, the man in the bicycle shop whipped a wheel off his own bike to get Yasuyuki back in the saddle again.

Sadly, Yasuyuki was robbed on the Trans-Siberian railway by a guard - the only time, he says, he has had trouble.

"It's much better than I expected," he says from the city of Novosibirsk, where he is staying with "a friend of a Russian friend from Japan". "I can't describe it in one word but I am experiencing many things every day. It's nice to see the world, to see Russian people, and to see a difference between countries. I am happy to know I am all right and I am getting closer to Ireland."

When we spoke he was setting off from Novosibirsk, heading for Moscow, and not expecting to meet anyone who knew of him - but this he finds not daunting at all: he expects to make friends "local people . . . they are so nice". There is no language barrier, he says. "I learn the language - every day I learn one word; today I learned three words." He describes how, when he stops at roadside cafes in villages and towns, people are surprised to see a lone traveller. "They gesture, `where is your partner?' and I say in Russian `two, too much'; they gesture, `don't you feel scared?' and I say the Russian word I know, for `fine, fine'. Sometimes people in cars stop and ask where are you going to, and they say `come to my house'. One car guided me 10 kilometres to his house and I stayed there and had great food and drink - of course vodka, Russian vodka.

"We don't need any words, we just need to open our hearts."

Crossing the Gobi desert, needless to say, there were no inns, so Yasuyuki either put up his tent or, if there were any nearby, approached nomad families who invariably welcomed him with open arms. Not far into the desert, he ran out of asphalt, and ended up pushing the bike for 10 minutes through the sand, resting for 10 minutes, pushing again, then resting again. Despite the physical strain, he says, he is in remarkably good condition.

"I feel very strong. Better than when I departed."

He is reluctant to name his favourite country so far, but "if I must choose, Mongolia was great. The people were just so nice - naturally nice. Nature there is just wild. One day I didn't see anyone at all, just horses." Yasuyuki is cycling about 100 kilometres a day. His landmark of choice is Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, which he reached at the end of May. "I can't describe it. It's deep, but it was mentally deep for me," he says. "I expected in Japan that I will feel tired of the long trip," he says, "but every day I have my goal - a short goal, a middle goal and a big goal. From here to the Urals is my small goal," (he should be reaching the Urals about the time you read this) "to Moscow is my middle goal, and my ultimate goal is O'Connell Street."

It is a journey remarkable for its ambition, and also for Yasuyuki himself. He came to Ireland some years ago and fell in love with the laid-back lifestyle. When he compared it with the highly-pressured, white-collar lifestyle that lay in wait for him at home in a typical Japanese company, he decided to "drop off the escalator" - a Japanese term for those few who defy the career convention.

His way of "dropping off", he decided, would be to undertake this monumental geographical journey; he hoped also to cross in his mind the great expanse of difference between the two cultures. Hopefully he can get here before the Celtic Tiger consumes the lifestyle he fell for.