“Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.”

“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 mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.”

“In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.”

“The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience.”

“The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.”

“It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.”