He shot to fame, first with his sporadic dispatches for The Sunday Times, later with Jupiter's Travels, an account of his journey - complete with love affair - which has so far sold more than 400,000 copies. That was 1973 when his luggage and equipment was a motley collection of rucksacks, bags and tin boxes.This time around life will be more comfortable. Mr Simon's bike is no longer a Triumph Tiger, but a sleek up-to-the-minute 1000cc BMW R80GS. And instead of tin boxes, he will be taking an arsenal of communications hardware including global positioning systems, digital camera and laptop The route will be as faithful as possible to his original.

He will drive down through Italy to Sicily, hop over to Tunisia and snake down through eastern Africa until he gets to Cape Town in South Africa. He will sail to Fortaleza in Brazil - where he was imprisoned for two weeks in 1974 - and then ride up the Pacific coast of Latin America through to California. He intends to sail to Australia, and will ride through South-east Asia and then India, Pakistan and even, he hopes, Afghanistan, before the final leg back through Europe.So why is he doing it? In part because he still can. "That I find myself at the age of 69 capable of doing this is pretty astonishing," he said.

"I started thinking about it a few years ago, as the first time was such an amazing experience and I've had such a great response from the book. The idea of doing it again grew in my mind, and then became too big to ignore In many ways the world is very different now. But I don't think it will prove to be as different as it sometimes seems."This time, the journey will be shorter, 18 months rather than four years. "I don't plan to fall in love too often," he said, "or hang out in communes."* Ted Simon's column will begin in two weeks in the Travel section.. Cow wars have broken out over what promises to be the largest public art project the world has seen.