Having fallen out of love with journalism, Ted moved to France and began restoring a ruined 13th-century gatehouse in the South of France while writing freelance celebrity stories for newspapers when actors filmed on the continent. As many of you will know, that tale was documented in Jupiter’s Travels, a book that is widely credited with bringing adventure motorcycling into the mainstream. The writing in the book is as bumpy as the roads the author traveled on, frequently crashing into a jumbled heap. Ted Simon has been a motorcycle travel mentor for riders and adventurers around the world for decades.

We Europeans sold our integrity many years ago for progress, and we have debased the word to mean merely someone who obeys the rules. He said, “This was a particularly interesting time to be there as it wasn’t long after the Communist regimes in Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania had crumbled. He went on to tell us, “One of the aims of The Ted Simon Foundation is to encourage overlanders to travel with the ambition to learn about the places they are travelling through. But he kept busy with a real mix of projects during those years and not all of his work has been on his motorcycle travel books. It’s important to him that his books have opened a new world to many who have never even remotely considered travelling by bike.

I regret that one culture has become so powerful that it has made all the others slaves or tributaries to it, even though it is my culture. I mean, being locked up in Brazil, that was the worst thing that happened to me (Ted was detained on suspicion of being a spy during a period of military dictatorship). He was gone 4 years and, in an age before mobile phones or cheap flights home, was often out of touch for worryingly long periods. Se volete chilometri con tantissima filosofia leggete ZAMM, qui la proporzione � invertita, e i chilometri sono centomila in quattro anni.

Once I’d moved to California, to begin with my time was very much taken up with writing, organic gardening, and sadly an acrimonious divorce.Money was tight in those days and my dad later joked he’d spent his lunch allowance for the entire week on the hardback. As I was recently reminded that I too can sometimes sound crude and judgemental, especially to more sensitive ears, I was ready to refrain from judging whether the author is indeed racist or sexist, and to cut him some slack and try to appreciate him admitting he was being an "asshole" for thinking that way. There are occasional references to specific wars, people (Mother Teresa made it into a sentence), and events but the journey and personal experiences are the thing. Some things he explains in great detail, taking several pages to explain some thing that happens in a few minutes.

Later on in the evening, she got busy in the kitchen and to go with rib eye steaks – barbecued by Ted – she treated us to Ukrainian home cooking, which was fab. The journey had little to do with motorcycles, which was really just a conduit for the narrative – a unique way of getting around that hadn’t, to my knowledge, been done before. He goes into great detail of these repairs and I skimmed through those parts; although if I ever end up with a Triumph, I will refer to this book for clues on how to fix a broken belt or replace the back tire.Of course, help did come, and I was soon back on my way, richer and happier because of the people I had met. He rounded that comment off with this, “The dumbest question I get asked is ‘why did you do your four year journey’? The book is an unbiased testament to an age, all the better for being on a triumph of course, whose fortunes came and went en route.

If you agree with The Ted Simon Foundation’s principals you can support either by joining as a Jupiter’s Companion or as a Jupiter’s Angel.Now, he and my mother are retired, and they spend a good deal of their time traveling still - on a motorcycle. Jupiter Travels has steadily grown over the years and it has become premier travel service provider in India. In October 1973, sponsored by The Sunday Times, I began riding around the world on a 500 cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle. Breakdowns, revolutions, war, a spell in prison, and a Californian commune were all part of his experience, which was coloured variously by utter despair and unimaginable joy. I mean, like Chile, where there was Pinochet and all sorts of terrible things were happening to people, but I enjoyed it, partly because I fell in love with a really beautiful woman and secondly because it was all so exciting and I wasn’t personally under threat.