When Vancouver-based adventurer Colin Angus decided he wanted to accomplish something no one else had, he was setting himself a stiff challenge. This was nothing new, however. In 2000, he became the first Canadian to raft the Amazon River from source to sea. He followed that in 2001 by travelling the length of the Yenisey, a little-known river that runs from Mongolia through Siberia to the Arctic Ocean–and just happens to be the world's fifth longest, at 5,500 kilometres.

But what great adventuring challenge was left undone? As it turned out, a simple Google search gave him the answer: nobody had ever circumnavigated the earth solely by human power.

Beyond the Horizon (Doubleday Canada, $29.95) describes Angus's two-year expedition, beginning in May 2004. It entailed cycling from Vancouver to Alaska, rowing across the Bering Sea, trekking through Siberia in winter, cycling from Moscow to the coast of Portugal, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, and finally cycling back home from Costa Rica to Vancouver–covering 43,000 kilometres in total.

Along the way, Angus faced death several times and suffered an ignominious split with his travel partner, Tim Harvey, halfway across Siberia, which nearly scuttled the expedition. Angus continued alone to Moscow, where his fiancée, Julie Wafaei, joined him. Together, they completed the second half of the circumnavigation, including a 145-day rowboat crossing of the Atlantic, during which they were hounded by three separate hurricanes outside of hurricane season and in areas where cyclonic storms normally do not form. Signs of climate change in action?

The thrill of this book lies not in the suspense of whether or not Angus makes it to the end of his journey, but rather in the details of his seemingly impossible quest: a narrow escape from death in a Siberian blizzard; the perplexing breakdown between Harvey and Angus; rugged wilderness locales few readers will ever have the chance to see; and the connections he made with locals along the way. Being forced to pare down his story to book form served Angus well–the writing here is a notch above that in his two previous titles, Lost in Mongolia (2003) and Amazon Extreme (2004).

In terms of his feud with Harvey, Angus tells his side of the story without dragging his ex-partner through the mud, but defends himself against Harvey's accusations, which were published on-line and in Harvey's Vancouver Sun column during the trek. Angus treats Harvey respectfully throughout, and even thanks him prominently in the acknowledgments.

In addition to adventure, drama, and romance, there is humour to be found here. For example, Angus required an emergency medical procedure in a backwater Siberian hospital. His depiction of the communication breakdown between him and the Russian-speaking medical staff is hilarious–and frightening, especially when he describes reinserting his own catheter.

Although Angus promised in an interview before leaving in 2004 that this expedition would be his last, it sounds like his adventurous spirit has infected his fiancée, whose own book about the ocean crossing, Rowboat in a Hurricane , will come out in 2008. According to his Web site, www.angusadventures.com/ ,the two are planning a rather unusual honeymoon: biking and rowing 400 kilometres of Vancouver Island, their new home. This is meant to train them for their next venture, rowing from Scotland to Syria, connecting their ancestral homelands. You'd think they'd be tired of rowing by now.