Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.

On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.