Kicking back in the lobby of a fairly stylish condominium in Little India, Mr Richard Ferge and his wife Stani Martinkova do not look like a couple who sold their home in London to cycle around the world on a budget of just US$8 a day.

They quickly clarify the situation.

'We're couchsurfing at a studio apartment that belongs to a Japanese working here. We're sharing it with six other couchsurfers from Indonesia, Poland and Sweden and sleeping on futons,' he says. Couchsurfing, an online social network for travellers, enables members to stay at one another's homes for free, all in the name of social networking.

If they had stayed at a serviced apartment, they would run out of money very quickly and it would contradict their objective. Their bike ride around the world is to raise awareness about global warming and climate change.

They sold their house a few years ago at a profit of £70,000 (S$152,000), which is roughly the amount of money they have for this round-the-world trip. Since starting their journey in December 2005 in France, they have spent £30,000.

Forty-eight countries and more than 80,000km later, they arrived last week in Singapore, their 49th country. Mr Ferge, a 38-year-old Frenchman, and Ms Martinkova, a 43-year-old Briton, have pedalled through Europe, parts of Russia, Mongolia, South Korea, western China, Laos, Vietnam and Malaysia.

They have probably not been here long enough to experience the ire many cyclists feel on roads.

He says: 'We like Singapore. The streets are wide and the drivers are nice. We're surprised that not many people commute to work on bicycles.'

Though they are impressed with how clean and unpolluted Singapore is, the couple point out the lack of bicycle paths and places to lock their bicycles at.

They want to show that they can see the world on a bicycle. 'We want to encourage people to save the environment and draw attention to how badly humans are treating the world,' he says. 'The human race is not doing its part to protect the planet.'

They refuse to take other forms of transportation unless it is absolutely necessary.

Accommodation is also minimal. When couchsurfing is not available, they live in a tent and sleeping bags, which are part of the 60 to 70kg load they each carry on their bikes. The custom-built bikes cost about £1,800 each. Their luggage include cooking pots, a portable stove, a laptop computer and 18-litre water bags.

They avoid buying plastic-wrapped food and bury biodegradable rubbish. She says: 'We're not insisting that people travel the world our way. But we want to show that it is indeed possible and perhaps inspire people to do the same.'

Their journey has drawn much attention everywhere they have visited, especially in countries such as Mongolia and remote parts of China where Caucasians are a rare sight. In those places, they say, they were treated by the natives as if they were exhibits 'in a circus'.

Recalling how it was common to wake up to see a group of people gathered around their tent, he says: 'They kept wanting to come into our tent and use our cooking fire to warm their hands.'

In Mongolia, the curious locals wore jackets made of sheep wool and wolf fur and smelt really bad 'because they don't really wash' during the winter.

She says they have 'learnt to be really tolerant with everybody, but it's hard because we're tired and hungry and always irritable'.

But on the bright side, they get to see parts of a country that few visitors see, and for free, too.

In Singapore, they organised their own night cycling tour and invited Singaporean cyclists on local Internet forums to join them. The tour starts tonight and at least 15 people have signed up, they say.

They visit museums when there is free admission and caught the recent Chingay Parade for free too. 'That's how we save money. We look for anything that's free or with discounts,' he says.

Their current expedition is actually the second leg of their trip around the world. The first part started in 1996 and they took 3� years to travel from Alaska in North America to Argentina in South America.

She says she had intended to do the trip on her own before Mr Ferge, whom she had just met at a nightclub in London, joined her.

He says: 'I thought she was travelling across America, from the West to the East Coast. I thought she was going to be gone for just three months.'

So he ditched his sommelier job and went along for the ride as he thought it 'would be a good way for them to find out more about each other'.

They returned to London in 2000 to stay with her parents since she had sold her apartment to pay for the trip and he owned no property.

The couple returned to regular life and jobs, a sommelier position for him and a financial coordinator's role for her, and managed to get a bank loan to buy a small house.

All the fighting 'like cats and dogs' on the road about what food to buy and which direction to take, which the couple say still happens today, sealed their relationship, though. They got married in 2004 before setting off yet again a year later, selling their house to fund the present second phase of their adventure.

'I always tell people that we're still on our honeymoon,' he jokes. They have no children.

'Our families think we're a bit crazy. They would rather see us with kids, a car, a nice house. But they let us do what we want,' he adds.

The couple leave tomorrow for Malacca, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and parts of China and South Africa they have not yet been to.

Although their experiences make up for the lack of modern luxuries on the road, she admits she misses the support of family and friends.

'Living in tents day after day when you're on the road can get very tiring,' she says.

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