LISBON -- Portuguese motorcyclist Mario Cales told media Tuesday he planned to travel overland to the Beijing Olympic Games from Portugal in a four-month trip covering 11 European countries and eight Asian countries.

The trip will begin in Lisbon on April 8 next year and end on August 8, the day of the Games' inauguration. The overall distance will be about 30,000 km, equivalent to more than three quarters of the Earth's diameter, and much longer than the straight-line distance to Beijing because he will not be traveling as the crow flies.

Cales said the government and Portuguese exporters are sponsoring his travel, and he will give press conferences on the trip, and write a book on the journey, as well as recording it in photographs and on videos.

Cales, 40, a native of northern Portuguese city Oporto, is the author of the book Relating Via Nature. He is a mental sciences professor in Oporto's Northern Professional University.