SINGAPORE - It takes about 13 hours to fly from London to Singapore, but two Scottish doctors decided to take the long way round.

After 11 months o n the roads on homemade bamboo bicycles, they arrived in Singapore on Monday afternoon.

The 15,000-mile (24,000km) trip crossing 24 borders is in support of aid agency Doctors Without Borders.

Along the way, Mr Tom Roberts and Mr Nicholas Moore, both 27, braved Siberian head winds in the Kazakh desert, the passes of Tajikistan's Pamir Highway in winter and the Indian plains during a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 48 deg C.

They said that one bicycle survived till the very end, "whilst the other sadly could not carry on a mere two weeks from the end".

The two will be giving a talk about their travels at bicycle company Shimano World on Tuesday (July 14) evening, just a day after arriving in Singapore.

They want to target a collection of £10,000 ($21,031) for Doctors without Borders, and have raised more than £5,300 so far on crowdfunding site justgiving.com.

"We hope to increase donations over the next week and by doing a speaker tour throughout the UK on our return," Mr Roberts told The Straits Times.