This is chapter 34 of my Tibet memoir in which I was laid low (I thought I was dying) by hepatitis, for which western medicine has no cure.  A few days later I got hit by a shockwave of illness and it was so bad that I was convinced I was about to die. All I could do...

This is chapter 33 of my Tibet memoir in which I make friends with a Chinese guy who's English was not only self-taught but it was a lot better than many native speakers. One of Sir Woo’s visitors stood out from the others. Not only was he taller than the rest but he...

This is chapter 33 from my Tibetan memoir, in which I manage to avoid the law (and the backpackers) and stay with local Tibetans... Although the Import Export people didn’t give me a job everything started happening at once. Life seems to work this way; once inside...

When I’m walking alone over a long distance, with no need to adjust my pace for other people, my subconscious takes over; it works out how far I have to go and then sets my body at the optimum speed – usually pretty fast. I felt myself powering over that mountain as...

This is chapter 30 from my Tibet memoir in which I make the transition from a debauched life in Lhasa and head into the mountains...  What followed was a nightmare. I could hardly control my feelings of panic and confusion; how was I supposed to make a lesson out of...

This is Chapter 29 from my memoir about hustling for work in Tibet in which I describe my American friends, some of whom you might not approve of... The next morning I hung around the Cheese Factory and kept a sharp eye on proceedings. I put a reservation in with the...

At the Kirey Hotel, the most expensive place to stay in the old town, I met a charming Tibetan who had been educated at an English-style private school in the Indian city of Chandigargh. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans had fled their homeland since the 1950s and...

This is Chapter 24 from my Tibet memoir in which I walk into the wilderness, stay a night with nomads and find a surprising level of comfort in a cave... The road into the mountains got steeper and the truck got slower. As we approached the high pass we were crawling...

This is Chapter 23 from my Tibet memoir which describes the most unusual Tourist Information Centre I'd ever come across... Before the end of my first week Lhasa had me hooked and I knew I should stay, settle down for a while and find something to do. The finding of...

The next morning I set off early and within an hour reached the massive turquoise lake I had seen from the hilltop the previous day. Some time later an old truck rattled past and ground to a halt ahead. It had big rounded wings at the front, in the pre-war style, and...

The next day I walked out of Gyantse in the direction of Lhasa. After a few hours I came across a scruffy old bus that was full of Tibetans and parked by the roadside. I stuck my head in the door, pointed eastwards and said Lhasa. They nodded and so I climbed aboard....

It was another day of walking and there were very few vehicles; about one truck every hour, none of which even slowed down. Storm clouds approached, the temperature dropped and I was walking up a long, seemingly endless hill. Rain had started to pour down and the wind...

The plateau stretched out across vast distances, with each horizon serrated by mountains. It was an uninhabited desert, alive with colours and strange sounds made by the wind, much more inspiring than the rather static photographs one sees in the National Geographic...

The road from Khasa was surfaced with gravel and clung to the gorge precariously. Soon it became clear why there was no traffic: as I walked along I could hear boulders crashing down from the forested gorge above, bouncing over the road and plunging into the abyss...

Kathmandu seemed seedier than ever as I waited for my Chinese visa. I had to keep busy, I couldn’t sit around all day or I would get depressed. It was August and the weather was hot, too hot, and by mid-afternoon I would feel slimy with sweat, as if I had been...

Professor Fastl seemed like a kind man. He was tall, handsome and pre-occupied. He had renovation projects going on all over Austria and wasn’t going to look too carefully at this scruffy applicant. He had no reason to not believe …

- You want a job? Here? In Vienna! Are you mad? You don’t even speak German! My new friend Andras was most amused. He was short, athletic, handsome and spoke fluent English. His family were obviously rich; he had his own flat in the centre of town and didn’t seem to...

I finally made my move and got a train ticket to Warsaw. After a few minutes the train stopped in East Berlin’s hauptbanhof (main station). There was a wild bustle of activity as hundreds rushed for the carriages, clouds of steam rose into the black metal roof arches;...