Phileas Fogg, a London gentleman of meticulous and unchanging habits, hires as his valet Jean Passepartout, a Frenchman who has had a variety of jobs, including circus performer, but now seeks a tranquil life. After reading in The Daily Telegraph that a new railroad in India has made it theoretically possible to travel around the world in 80 days, Fogg bets his fellow members at the Reform Club that he will make that journey in 80 days or less; the wager is for the princely sum of £20,000 (half his fortune). Leaving that night, Fogg and a nonplussed Passepartout board a train bound for Dover and Calais to begin their journey.
Shortly before Fogg’s departure, someone resembling him had robbed a bank, and Fogg’s sudden exit leads Scotland Yard to believe that he was the bank robber. Accordingly, a detective, Mr. Fix, is sent to Suez, in British-ruled Egypt, to await the steamer Mongolia, on which Fogg and Passepartout are traveling. Fix befriends Passpartout, and, after learning that they will take the steamer to Bombay, he buys a ticket and joins them. The Mongolia reaches Bombay before the arrival of an arrest warrant, however. During the few hours before their planned departure for Calcutta on the Great India Peninsula Railway, Passepartout visits a Hindu temple on Malabar Hill, unaware that Christians are forbidden to enter and that shoes are not to be worn inside. He is beaten by enraged priests and barely makes it to the train station on time.
