When my brother was a baby, he cried strangely. He'd cry, "Leh, leh, leh". To my sister and me, it seemed as if he was trying to say his name. It's Leon. It means lion in Latin.

My brother could eat eight Weet-Bix in a sitting when he was 8. He ate them with a tablespoon from the age of 3.

By the time he was 10, he was challenged by a friend's father to eat as many as he could. He ate an entire family-size packet and asked for more.

My brother was a weird kid. So was I, only more so. Once, he somehow became convinced that swearing would get you sent to hell and that "yikes" was the worst swearword of them all. I may have told him this. I chased him around the house, yelling "yikes" at him. He cried for hours. I was proud.

I bullied my brother mercilessly when I was a teenager. I was convinced he was a dweeb and used to literally push him away when he tried to hang out with my friends and I.

Once, I pushed him into the corner of a table. It made him bleed from the head. He never told on me, and I never forgave myself.

My brother can climb trees like a monkey. He actually swings from branch to branch. He has absolutely no fear of heights. He jumps off dizzying cliffs into the ocean. In playgrounds, he scuttles across the tops of the swings like Spider-Man. Adults and children look on in awe. The faces of the kids say, "That's who I want to be when I grow up".

My brother looks like me, even though he's five years younger. We've had twins ask if we are twins. When I was in my first year at university, he came to visit me at lunchtime. I was eating with friends, excused myself, and went to meet him. We swapped clothes quickly and I watched from a vantage point as he headed back to the table where I'd been sitting.

He tucked into what could charitably, if not accurately, be described as a meat pie, while my friends, one by one, became acutely aware that something, somewhere had gone awry. One asked if he (I) had had a haircut. Another stared at him in silence for minutes.

"You're not Josh," he burst out suddenly. "Who are you? How is this? Why do you look like Josh? What have you done with Josh?"

My brother looks like Jesus. It's the long hair and the beard. I know, I said he looks like me, but as we're getting older, I'm losing hair and he's getting more. It's not fair. He showed up at the wedding of a mutual friend and for a brief moment I was sure that Christ had dropped to offer his blessing to the nuptials.

He does well with the ladies (my brother, not Jesus, although possibly also Jesus). The reason he does well with the ladies is because he has no clue that he does well with the ladies. I, on the other hand, know I do well with the ladies, and as a result do not do well at all.

My brother came to live in my flat last year for a few months after moving away from Wellington. He cooked awesome vegetarian meals. He instantly charmed all my friends, and made plenty of new ones. Most days, people ask me how he's doing.

My brother recently moved to Australia, where he gets to see my other brother, who is equally as rad and has just as many interesting stories. But this column is about Leon, because Leon has just left Australia on his way to India, where he and some friends are racing a rickshaw across the subcontinent to raise money for charity. It's entirely mad and very dangerous and I'll worry about him.

It's reminded me of how important my family is, how our lives have shaped each other. So now I take the opportunity to say to him: gang warily, go carefully.

The Waikato Times has been kind enough to let me write this plug for my mental brother's crazy venture (theadventurists.com/the-adventures/rickshaw-run) and link to his team's donations page (justgiving.com/teamshogun). All money raised goes to the charity Frank Water, (frankwater.com/about), which provides clean drinking water projects in developing countries. If you give, thank you.

Joshua Drummond is a Hamilton freelance writer who enjoys knowing that Leon will be ridiculously embarrassed when he reads this.