In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.
I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.
Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat p...
My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.
Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out...
Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.
A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.
With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.
Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.
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.
In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.
For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire count...
Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown an...
Only a man who has his health, a full stomach and wears clean clothes would ever entertain the notion of tracking down the greatest lost city on Earth.
As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.