English teenager Tommy Lamb closing in on 100-day, 21-country overland journey to Adelaide's Ashes Test

There are intrepid travellers, then there's Manchester's Tommy Lamb.

The 18-year-old cricket fanatic has already travelled through 21 countries in an odyssey that's taken more than 100 days in an effort to make it to Adelaide Oval for the third Ashes Test.

The challenge: make the entire trip overland or by sea. No planes allowed.

The plan is to join his parents, who are both members of the Barmy Army supporting the England cricket team on the Ashes tour.

He told Saturday Extra's Nick Bryant why he was inspired to take on such an epic trek.

"It'd be a great way to get myself off the beaten path and force myself to see different parts of the world that otherwise I wouldn't go to," Lamb said.

"That's — that's the sort of travel I want to do."

His journey has taken him from England through Western Europe, into the Balkans, then south through Türkiye into Iran, Pakistan and China and on to south-east Asia.

With his trusty cricket bat in his backpack, Lamb has found a way to get a game of some sort happening in every country he's visited.

"Every time I spend the night in a place, a new place, I try and play some cricket there," Lamb said.

"You get all these people giving you weird looks: 'What on earth are you asking? What on earth are you doing?'

"But eventually you'll find a few people that are really up for it, and you end up playing a 30-minute game with a border guard on the lake in northern Albania and it's just a memory for a lifetime."

His journey was inspired by his father telling Tommy a story of one completed by Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler in the early 1970s.

"I always wanted to take a year out after school [and] I've always been interested in travel. I love my cricket obviously, as well," Lamb said.

"My dad, about two years ago, was just telling a story of two people that did this same trip in the 1970s and when I heard him talking about that, I thought that sounded great.

"I knew I wanted to go to the Ashes during my year off, I knew it would collide, and I thought, well, if I could get to the Ashes without a plane, it'd be a great way to make content online."

Lamb has been publishing a daily log of his journey on his Instagram account. His video diaries have documented his travels — warts, cuts, breaks, bruises and all — including a serious motorcycle accident in Vietnam.

"I've never driven a motorbike before, so it was just the stupidest thing you could possibly do as an 18-year-old Brit travelling in south-east Asia," Lamb said.

"So, I fractured my skull, broke my nose, had quite a few bad scratches here and there, but it wasn't the end of the world.

"Spent a few days in hospital, thankfully, was very well taken care of and then a few days in a hotel.

"I just felt worse telling my mum — that was probably the most nerve-racking part of the whole thing, rather than the accident itself."

He's experienced unexpected delights like discovering the beauty of Iran.

"Absolutely loved it, it was one of my favourite places that I've been to," Lamb said.

"I mean that there's definitely a bias here that I think when I was in Iran, every day you wake up and as a Westerner, as a Brit, you're sort of thinking, 'oh my God, I'm in Iran' and you can't quite believe it.

"It wasn't what I expected to find — it was a beautiful place with beautiful people and you gotta separate the government from the rest of it."

That was in stark contrast to his experience in the Pakistan province of Balochistan, where terrorist attacks and bombings have killed hundreds this year alone.

The Australian government's Smartraveller website recommends against travelling to the province because of the poor security situation and high risks of kidnapping.

Lamb found himself shuffled from police car to police van and spent two nights sleeping in cells.

"I'm travelling for 12 hours in a day, that'll probably be about 20 different military escorts because every time you move district, you get into a new car," Lamb said.

"So, on the first day, I only got about halfway into Balochistan and I was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, dropped off in this town.

"It was about midnight, and they basically said to me, 'there's no hotels here. You're gonna have to stay in the prison cell.'

"I have a few Pakistani friends back home and when I told them I was going into Balochistan, they couldn't quite believe it themselves.

"My logic always goes that, you know, if the locals can survive it for their whole lives, I'm sure I can survive it for a couple of days."

His next stop was south-east Asia, where he got stuck in floods in Thailand before losing his luggage and passport after leaving them in a car. Somehow, he regained them within a day.

If you think Lamb sounds like a somewhat naive and lucky young man, you're probably right, but he displays maturity beyond his years.

He is also exceptionally open to the world and all the experiences that have come his way.

"My older brother was a big fan of calling me a naive 18-year-old who doesn't know about the real world," Lamb said.

"But I always had this belief that … 99 per cent of the people you meet are all nice, no matter where you are in the world.

"And that's exactly what I've experienced: No matter which part of the world I'm in, I meet so many nice people that are willing to help me no matter what situation I'm in."

His latest "situation" is being stuck in Singapore and desperately trying to get a lift of some sort on a boat to take him further south to Indonesia.

"I've emailed every single cargo ship company I can think of, I've gone to multiple cargo ship HQs, I've gone to marinas, I've asked everyone for boats heading towards Australia," Lamb said.

He at least found time to watch Joe Root score his maiden test century in Australia from the bar of the Singapore Cricket Club.

The plan is to meet his Barmy Army parents for the third Test in Adelaide, and if he can't make that, the backstop is Boxing Day in Melbourne.

And no matter what, he won't be catching a plane.