It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

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

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

In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.

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

One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.

A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.