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

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

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

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.

The rain of Madre de Dios is similar to that of the Amazon, but there is a petrifying aspect to it, as if it seeks to wound rather than to nurture.

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

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.