Our Hospedaje in Puyuhaupi was cheap, and I would love to have said cheerful but in reality was pretty grim. The walls were made of plywood, the gas cooker dropped in by plane, the patchy linoleum floor (at one time a flower patterned design now indecipherable) was almost level and the ceiling and door lintel was low as my forehead will testify...

Like a good bottle of wine the Nepalese hills are a lot of fun and usually half-empty. Hit the foothills at the right time and the paths and the views are all yours. We were on the Langtang circuit running up to the Ganja-La and then back down to pizzas and a comfy bed...

“It’s easier to take the bus from the agency than the bus terminal” said our driver as he dropped us off at the bus yard “it’s a twelve hour journey from here. There’ll be someone waiting for you at the other end”. This sounded like a call of doom with Peter waiting at the pearly gates – not another long South American bus journey!

It was the flash of yellow wings which slapped my attention as I steeped
from the air-conditioned jeep and out into the furnace of the African day...

Bagamoyo means “lay down your heart” and the many people who found themselves there waiting to be taken to America as slaves did just that. They huddled in the crowded dungeons, with no control over their fate. Centuries later I had come to visit out of choice, and I found that I lay down my heart too...

I was nursing a battered heart. A difficult break up with a girlfriend had led me to spend a month camping and climbing at Joshua Tree National Park in Eastern California. A community of rascals and rock climbers lived in a beautiful landscape with golden granite spires surrounded by desert flowers and cacti. The sun shined everyday and the faces around the campfires told ribald tales of hazard and peril...

Valle Nacional at four in the morning was silent save for the chirping of a cicada and a dog barking in the distance...

It was July, 1977, and I was traveling overland by bus from Greece to India. With me were my two best Yank friends (Joe and Rick) and a motley male/female assortment of Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and Cannucks, off to experience exotic Asia in our mid-20s...

It was Wednesday 19 March 1975 when I saw Albert for the first time. Clad in green and yellow he was very handsome. True, he had seen better days but what else would you expect from a 1947 ex-Sydney Albion double decker bus? He was going to carry me from New Delhi to Istanbul for the princely sum of £83.

As soon as Jon and I heard that there is a suckling pig restaurant in Ubud, we lined right up with the rest of the Indonesians for the perfect lunch. I should have seen the warnings...the brown conglomerate of mess that I mistook for mud or pig spices and the table umbrella that covered all of the other seats except for mine...