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.

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

A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.

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

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.

Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.

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