This trip was intended to follow in the footsteps of the (fictitious) Phileas Fogg in the 1873 Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days.

Steam liners don't exist any more, so all of the long sea journeys had to be on container ships or freighters.

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).

The trip across the U.S.A. was done by train, which was fairly fast, and this stretch was presumably considered to be less interesting for Western TV viewers (the intended audience) than the more exotic parts in the Middle East and Asia.

The text of this book is available free to read online on Michael Palin's official web site.