The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.
Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I w...
As anyone who's ever taken an Ethiopian bus knows, there is an unwritten rule that the windows must remain firmly closed.
Prideep pointed to the flames of paraffin lamps as they came alive in the distance and cackled in awe at the experience. (…) I was to discover that making tasty soup with one carrot, ten peas and a li...
On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
The situation was different in the jungle. Every inch of ground had to be earned, and was done so through much exertion with the blade.
I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.
There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:The sages who have compassed sea and...
Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
The ants are bad The Bearthe ants?TahirDo not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down. Osman.
As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.
Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.
As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: ‘Don’t waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!’I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a soc...
Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way.
Experience has taught me the power of trophies. You may have every knick-knack and useless contraption ever devised, but while they weigh you down, a simple trophy can go a long, long way.
The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
None of them seemed to mind sliding around in the faeces and choking in the smoke. They were determined not to miss the opportunity of watching a foreigner make a fool of himself.