On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.

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

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

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

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

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.

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.