The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.

On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.

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.

I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.

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

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

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