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.

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

There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

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.

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

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