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

If hot food is they key to maintaining an expedition's stamina, then low grade gut-rot alcohol is the key to sustaining its sense of pleasure.

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.

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

Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.

There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

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.