A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.

Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.

I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.

Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.