A group of patently insane individuals - three Americans, four Russians - sets off from the Sea of Japan to cycle across Siberia. Within weeks the road vanishes. "You cannot go where there is no road," the group's KGB escort declares triumphantly, and prepares to abandon bicycle clips: but go they did, pushing through an 800-mile swamp, surviving on potatoes, warm milk, blocks of black bread and the incredible generosity of people who had nothing to give. Mark Jenkins is a cyclist first, a writer second, and some of his more poetic flights of fancy in praise of two-wheeled transport can be irritating to the unconverted; but his incredulous accounts of attempts to make phone calls home, or order a meal in a Leningrad restaurant, are sporadically amusing.
