 To some extent the book reads like a diary, as Michael Palin starts each section of the book with a heading like "Day 42 - Hong Kong".This reflects the fact that the whole trip was a kind of "race against time" effort, and being aware of how many days have passed and how many days are left before the magic number 80 arrives adds extra excitement.An interesting aspect of this trip is that almost 3/4 of the time (59 days) was spent getting around the first half of the globe (Europe, Middle East, Asia, Pacific to the International Date Line) and only 1/4 of the time (21 days) for the last half of the trip (rest of the Pacific, U.S.A., Atlantic).