Stu Nugent was never a good candidate for a round-the-world so cycling trip. He was, and remains, a coward. In a flash of uncharacteristic daring, influenced by alcohol and a traumatic brain injury, he attempted to cycle the Northern Silk Road, from Shanghai to Europe. He failed. He failed dramatically. Against a backdrop of the world's most staggering, awe-inspiring landscapes, he was forced to smoke opium at gunpoint, attacked by a snake in a remote Kyrgyz river, robbed at gunpoint by the police, and eventually imprisoned in anonymous jail somewhere in the Kazakh steppe.

How did it all go so wrong?