Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

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

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

Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials and tribulations of the struggle. But, in many ways, it is the sense of triumph in the face of such adversity that makes the experience all the more poignant.

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?

The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.