Overcoming my fear of travel
Although I loved the city of Liverpool I found the university itself really boring. What helped me stick it out was mixing with ordinary people. In my first year I had hung out on a building site – there was …
My First Day at School
How long can I stand in the burn until my feet go numb? Too long. Better to keep throwing stones into the deep bit. Maybe I’ll wake up a fish. I wonder where all this water comes from? Up that …
Bizarre Airport Experiences
I travel a lot by plane even though it’s environmentally destructive and increasingly boring. Airports in places like Bucharest or Tirana used to be so different from anything we’d seen in the west – the airport terminal in Tirana, a …
A Day in the Life of Magnus Wolfe Murray
05:30 – Alarm goes off and Magnus gets up. Quick wash but no time for breakfast. Onto his Giant mountain bike and off into the narrow streets of Kathmandu. We ride fast, keeping up with the small Hero Honda motorbikes …
Tibet and Nepal
I want to describe my last visit to Nepal, a fascinating little Himalayan country.
Thirty years have passed since I was last in Kathmandu. My presence there was both dramatic — I had been kicked out of Tibet — but …
Memory is an Unreliable Witness
I recently met up with Xander Berkeley, a Hollywood actor who played in one of the greatest thrillers of all time – Terminator 2 – which was made in 1991. He has featured in over 200 films and TV shows …