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

The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.

I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

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.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.