The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

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.

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

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

In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.

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