In 2011, a British woman left London to circle the globe by bike, kayak and rowing boat; four years later, after a typhoon rescue and ocean crossings, she returned to London

Not every journey starts with a plan to alter the world. Some begin with a decision. One decision. To keep going after a loss. When Sarah Outen’s father died unexpectedly in 2006, the teenage rower turned her sadness into a solo crossing of the Indian Ocean, becoming the first woman to row the Indian Ocean solo and earning her a fellowship most people would spend a lifetime chasing.That was just the first chapter: Outen had made the first voyage, still an undergraduate at her Oxford college. Three years after graduation, in April 2011, she departed from Tower Bridge, London, on a journey she termed London2London: to traverse the entire northern hemisphere using only a bicycle, a kayak and a rowing boat.Starting from Tower BridgeIn theory, it was a simple plan. Outen would kayak over the Channel, cycle through Europe and Asia, row across the Pacific, cycle again through North America and ultimately row the Atlantic back to Britain. She thought she would get the full circle done in about two and a half years. In reality the earth had other plans, and the adventure would eventually take four and a half years and over 25,000 miles. Her history, on record at St Hugh's College, where she rowed for the college boat club before her first ocean journey, spans the complete arc from student rower to round-the-world explorer.Storms from the Pacific, rescue in the mid-oceanOuten’s first effort to row across the North Pacific in 2012 almost spelt doom for the entire mission. Less than a month into the voyage, her boat, the Gulliver, had been caught up in Typhoon Mawar, which meant she had to abandon the vessel and wait for the Japanese coastguard to take her out of the water. She spent months healing, both physically and emotionally, and then decided to return to Japan to give it another go.In 2013 she went off again in a new boat called Happy Socks and made it, becoming the first woman to row from Japan to Alaska. She even proposed to her partner on her satellite phone at one point during the voyage, bringing a moment of delight to a segment of the journey that had already pushed her to her limits. She paddled over a thousand miles north from Alaska with a paddling companion before switching to a bicycle called Hercules for a journey of North America during one of the worst winters the continent has seen in decades, with temperatures down to approximately minus 40 degrees Celsius.A narrow shave in the Atlantic, London boundThe last ocean section was just as pitiless as the first. Outen had spent 143 days at sea crossing the Atlantic east in 2015 before having to quit the passage and be evacuated due to Hurricane Joaquin, a choice she called one of the hardest of the whole expedition. Instead of giving up with the finish line in sight, she returned to complete the last stage, cycling and kayaking from Falmouth back to London.On 3 November 2015 Outen completed the loop by kayaking under Tower Bridge while friends, family and fans lined the banks of the Thames. By then she had already become the youngest person to do two solo ocean rows, one of several records to emerge from an expedition that had taken four and a half years rather than the two and a half originally intended.Later, Outen wrote about the experience in her book Dare to Do. 'The trek was as much an emotional test of resilience as a physical one,' she said. Her narrative today inspires young people to achieve big ambitions, a fitting legacy for an adventure that began with a commitment to make something of grief and concluded with a roaring audience welcoming her home to London.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.