When the 30-year-old Puskar Shah set out on his bicycle to see the world in 1998, his mother gave him a 100-rupee note. He didn't have any sponsors, or big-name backers. All he had was the determination to take his message of peace to all corners of the world on a bicycle.

Today, after crossing 88,000 km, Puskar's journey is only a third complete and he is back home for a rest and to take part in a peace rally being organised by the World Cyclist Foundation in Kathmandu in January.

Born in the tiny village of Makaibari in Dolakha, Puskar lost his father at the age of 17. He served in the Indian army, and was killed by militants in Assam. During the pro-democracy movement in Nepal in 1991, Puskar was among many student activists who were arrested and tortured by police.

"Nobody really inspired me to go around the world on a bicycle. It just came out of my own conviction, that I should take the Buddha's message of peace out to the world and make Nepal better known," recalls Shah. But in the past four years that he has been on the road, it is Puskar's own motherland that has been wracked by violence, conflict and the headline-grabbing massacre of royals. Instead of talking about world peace, he has been busy explaining events back home to journalists who interview him.

Everywhere he has gone, with the red double triangle Nepali flag fluttering proudly from the handlebars, he has been welcomed. "I have been overwhelmed by the generosity and warmth shown by complete strangers," he told us. The only places where help has not been as forthcoming, unfortunately, have been in some Royal Nepal Embassies in foreign capitals.

Last year, his bicycle was stolen in New Zealand, and he had to beg to feed himself. Luckily, Sir Edmund Hillary strode to his rescue and bought him a new bike and paid for logistics. And wherever he has run into the Nepali diaspora, they have taken him in and treated him like a hero.

So far, Puskar has pedalled through South Asia, South-east Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and China and on to Central America and the Caribbean. By January 2003, he'll be on the road again to begin the fourth leg of his trip in Mexico and go down to South America. After that, there will only be Europe and Russia.

An amateur singer and lyricist, Shah pens verse whenever he's lonely and homesick on some dark desert highway on the other side of the planet. Back home, his mother, wife and four-year-old son are fully supportive, if sometimes a bit worried when they don't hear from him for a while. And for good luck, Puskar still carries in his pocket the Rs 100 note his mother gave him four years ago.