Travels with My Hat - book available soon!

Travels with My Hat, the book about my adventures as a travel writer will be published in October. Beautifully designed, it is lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps. Stay up-to-date for the publication date on my blog: travelswithmyhat.com and at www.twitter.com/mudskipper.

RED SEA ADVENTURE: EXCERPT Chapter 2 TWMH

This is a taster of Chapter 2-- Red Sea Adventure-- from my new book Travels with My Hat.  Seeking winter sunshine, I had gone back to Hurghada, a small  fishing village with one hotel in 1964. I wondered if it was still there...

...‘I want to find the Funduq Sheraton,’ I told my taxi-driver, a young man wearing designer stubble and a David Beckham 7 football shirt.

 ‘Road closed.’ His brow knitted in the rear vision mirror.

‘Izmi Hurghada thirty years ago!’ I tapped my chest with a certain pride since I had clearly graced Hurghada before he was born. But he was right. The old road was blocked by a rusty, corrugated iron fence plastered with posters advertising an ‘Eid Concert’ at the Ministry of Sound and other extravaganzas for the imminent Muslim feast of sacrifice.

‘Funduq Sheraton!’ he suddenly exclaimed, pulling up beside a crumbling circular building surrounded by leaning lamp posts and dusty trees. Grey, shabby and clearly unloved, I recognised it as the old Red Sea Tours Hotel, a large Marriott which had risen beside it being one of 160 new hotels since my visit all those years ago.

Hurghada’s long main street was still known as Sharia Sheraton, even though a new Sheraton had re-located to Soma Bay, far away from bungee jumping, kite-surfing, glass-bottom boat rides, submarine tours and other entertainments for holidaymakers flocking to the popular Red Sea resort. Wherever I looked there were hotels, cafes and shops selling tourist tat, but a sign, Harrads Hurghada, captured my attention.

On the pavement outside, glass water pipes, brass trays, wooden animals, leather pouffes, and camel backpacks were displayed beside baskets of karkady—the  dried red hibiscus flowers that Egyptians make into tea. As I raised my camera to take a picture, an intense looking man who clearly hadn’t shaved for days, got up from a dirty white plastic chair. ‘Everything inside 1GBP,’ he said, holding up a finger.

Going into his shop, I picked up a fish from a display of onyx marine life. ‘Fish 4 GBP,’ he quickly corrected himself.  Removing the stopper, I sniffed one of the half-filled, urine-coloured flagons of perfume lining a shelf. ‘Perfume 10GBP for100 grams.’ He cleared his throat. Then all of a sudden he flew into a rage.

 ‘Tourist just lookin’. No buy anythin!’  Flecks of spit appeared in the corners of his mouth as he shouted.  ‘ Every tourist fuggin Russhin. Old woman wantin sex. Fuggin rubbish. Only lookin! Pay nothin! Russhin Fuggin! Fuggin! Fuggin! Oh Allah! What we do?’

 He clasped his hands together and concerned my presence might bring on a seizure, I left him shouting to continue my walk along the Sharia Sheraton.            

 Every second shop I passed was stuffed with souvenirs. In the window of a leather-ware store, a lizard skin handbag, including the head, half-chewed away by insects, was marked 145 Egyptian pounds. I wanted to buy a plain white T-shirt, but everything had either a shark or a pyramid on it…

                 

A HARD DAY'S FRIGHT

Most travellers have hotel adventures, but few will have been frightened out of their wits by a couple climbing into bed with them in the middle of the night. This happened to me in Morocco when they mistook their room and I did the unthinkable—I forgot to lock my door.

A hotel is a home away from home for travellers and especially for travel writers. So I don't deny to being fussy about the standards. Will my room overlook the motorway or the market? Will I be over the kitchen, or under the discotheque? Will there be an Indian wedding in the garden or a buffet around the pool? IS THE HOTEL STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Do you suffer from  xenodociophobia—a fear of foreign hotels?  An airline stewardess I know will never sleep on the ground floor after finding a snake in her room in Darwin while an interior decorator friend will not stay higher than the ninth floor in case fire traps him in his Calvin Klein’s. My London postmastman said his own particular dread was finding hard pillows on his annual holiday in Bournemouth.

Hard pillows, lumpy mattresses, slow room-service, no room-service—room-service banging in with breakfast—these are common complaints. 

 I always carry a personal pillow, but my own phobia is the colour orange drives me mad. Why does a sunburnt country like Australia have so many motels with a hot, orange décor? The same is true, I have discovered, of many hotels in the Arab world. After being out in the desert, I want the décor to be cool green. Or blue.

Do you agree that many hotel bathrooms leave much to be desired? Do you scald yourself under the mixer tap for instance?  Well, that's nothing. When I stayed in Hunza in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, the bearer-wallah brought me water to wash in a bucket filled from a dripping glacier.

I had many adventures while researching a book on Pakistan. At a canal rest-house in Dera Ghazi Khan, I awoke in the night to find the room had been invaded by saffron-coloured frogs. More than 40 were leaping about when I turned on my torch (there was no elecricity). Then in Balakot, in the Kagan Valley, I was disturbed by bush-mice chewing the orange flavoured vitamin C tablets in my wash-bag.

The service in some hotels can be truly disturbing as well. Leaving a hotel in Tangier recently, my bags were carried out to a taxi by the porter, smoking a cigarette. (who was angry that I requested he put it out).

In the 1980s when I was working in Khartoum, we had a power failure every night. On one occasion I was trapped for hours in an elevator with a 7ft tall Dinka man. Then in another hotel, this time in Port Sudan, I opened the window for a breath of air and the entire thing crashed into the courtyard.

Happily most places to stay have improved dramatically in the intervening years, but I’m sure all travellers have their tales of hotel holiday hell: what are yours?

 Images: www.copix.co.uk

The Terrible Cafe Lemsid

 Excerpt from Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book ---Travels with My Hat, 85,000 words 8 pages pictures.         Chapters on Ethiopia, the Royal Tour of Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen. Pictured is the terrible                      Cafe Lemsid in the Western Sahara, from the final chapter on Morocco.

                                                                

...I’ve often thought I’d found the middle of nowhere on my travels, only to realise that I was on the edge of somewhere, but the Café Lemsid was definitely in the middle of nowhere. Caramel and raspberry red, it resembled a giant lolly that had fallen off a desert transport and surrounding it lay the detritus of local civilisation: burst tyres, perished fan-belts, broken lobster-traps and empty port-a-gas cylinders. A rug was stuffed in a hole in the wall to keep out wind-blown sand, and among items stacked behind its counter were boxes of Gunpowder tea, flour, candles, packets of “Tide”, balls of string and inevitably— tinned sardines.  It’s owner said fresh fish arrived daily from Boujdour, so that even in this god-forsaken place I was able to sit down at a broken table for lunch (grilled dorade).  A lame, fish-eating chicken hopped about for scraps: it would never be killed and eaten, I decided; it was much too horrible. As I settled my bill, a grand-taxi pulled up and I half expected it to disgorge a host of characters from a Fellini  film—dwarfs, transvestites and dancing bears—but they were merely crushed passengers from Dakhla, relieved for the chance to stretch their legs on their long journey up to Agadir...

Thoughts and Truths on Travel Writing

It is my belief that the days of freelance travel writers doing a quick tour of a place, sponsored by this airline, or that hotel are over. Finished. Dead in the water.

Future travel guides are likely be written by a local since all things considered, sending a travel writer out from London or Sydney, to write about somewhere, thousands of miles away, is curious. Even arrogant. And certainly costly.

Travel writers must accept there are good regional journalists, both local and/or expatriate, who need only follow the publishing brief. And should their writing fall short, it can always be polished by an editor.

A former travel guide writer, I was always conscious that ‘Joe Public’ normally only gets one annual holiday. I therefore made damn sure my advice was correct. In Bali, I once drove 50 miles to check an hotel when the owner didn’t even offer me a drink. And I waited an hour to meet the owner of “Rick’s Café” in Casablanca. Ditto.

Such energies were not always supported by the publisher. As writer, I had first refusal to an update when due to editorial ignorance, I was not always free. Like requiring a revision on a Muslim country during Ramadan. Or a giving a three week deadline to update Malaysia, during the rainy season.

A major UK publisher went ahead, without my knowledge, and reprinted my Seychelles guide, three years after the original printing. The new edition bore my name, but it had not been updated. The reason given was that it was not cost effective…

I had a similar experience with a guide to Oman, a country whose development I’ve followed since 1975. The publisher did a reprint, eight years after the first edition which I only found while browsing in a bookshop. When I called to query what was going on, the editor said they’d done a ‘desk job.’

A desk job! On a country such as Oman where change is like a thunderbolt.

I will say no more, except to suggest that the comments of the paying public on an internet site tend to have more credibility that many a guide-book.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

Visit to the Ogaden: Excerpt from Chapter 1 Ticket to Addis Ababa

..Only the political correspondents were invited to the evening banquet in Menelik’s old Imperial Palace in Addis Ababa. Back at the hotel, I added my name to the list of journalists wanting to visit the famine belt, and next morning, escorted by Ethiopia’s portly Minister for Relief, we took off for Gode in a chartered DC3.

Gode lies in the Ogaden, a vast tract of south-east Ethiopia bordered by Kenya and Djibouti, and sharing a historically disputed frontier with Somalia. A semi-desert region, it supports only scraggy shrubs and trees, but the Webi Shebelle River crosses it before flowing into the Indian Ocean, more than 1,000 kilometres (500m) from its source in the Ethiopian highlands.

‘We’ve had no response to our appeal for medical teams,’ Shimalis told us in the Gode refugee camp where one skinny doctor, two tired nurses and three overworked dressers were attempting to care for 12,000 starving victims of the famine.

‘She will die,’ murmured the doctor of a wasted mite whose arms were no thicker than my fingers. ‘There have to be mass graves before anyone wants to help, and once you find fresh graves, we have lost our battle against the drought.’ He sighed deeply.

Times are never normal, or good in this god-forsaken corner of Africa, where Somali nomads roam in a perpetual search for sustenance. Both for themselves and their herds.

Shimalis frowned. ‘They are a primitive people who eat food on the hoof, using a special curved knife to slice steaks off the living animal, then packing the wound with mud.’

Hammered by the sun and buffeted by sand-laden winds, it had been five years since the Ogaden had received a drop of rain. Wherever I looked, sun-bleached bones punctured the desert landscape. Even the hardy camel herds were dying. Walking away from my colleagues, I came upon a small group moaning softly around a dried up water hole. One was a mother with two young whose hump had shrunk to a flab of skin.

She salivated, rolling her tongue, as the twins butted her udder in frustration. As I watched, she sank to her knees and rested her chin on the sand. A buzzard took off from a twisted acacia, then another and looking up, I saw other scavengers circling in the washed out sky. I had encountered many unpleasant situations on my travels when I’d tried not to cry, but conditions in Gode brought on tears... ..

www.travelswithmyhat.com
Images: http://www.copix.co.uk/

TRAVELLING HAT RECIPE

THAI ROAST DUCK CURRY

½ Chinese-style roast duck, chopped and with loose bones removed

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely sliced

1 teaspoon of turmeric, ½ teaspoon curry powder

2 cubes crushed garlic

1 tablespoon crushed fresh ginger root

1 stick bruised lemon grass

2 sliced and seeded small red chillies

50 m chicken stock

100 m coconut milk

5 tablespoons of grated coconut block

Juice of half a fresh lime

Dash of nom-pla (Thai fish sauce)

Fresh coriander leaves

Preparation

Heat oil in a pan and fry onion, garlic and raw chilli until soft. Stir in all the spices and simmer for 3 minutes. Add the lemon grass and pour in the hot chicken stock. Add the coconut milk and the cream of coconut, the lime-juice and finally the pieces of chopped duck. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes on a low heat. Remove when hot and garnish with fresh coriander leaves. Serve with steamed Thai rice.

Serves 3-4 persons

Images: www.copix.co.uk

BALI BEHIND THE MASK

In the mountains of central Bali lies the village of Kintamani, a magical, almost spiritual place, a world away from the crowded coastal resorts.

Standing there at dusk I inhaled a scent of pine-log fires and listened to sounds drifting up from the valley: the dull clonk of cow bells, the hoarse cough of a herdsman and the soulful cry of the kik-kik-kir bird. Suddenly the mist parted revealing Gunung Batur, one of several volcanoes smoking gently in the island core and Kala –God of Darkness, plunged Kintamani into night.

Nehru called Bali ‘The Morning of the World’. Other visitors, equally smitten, have described it as ‘paradise’ and by the end of my own stay, I truly felt that Bali offers a challenge to the general concept of whatever this means.

The island was unknown outside Indonesia until discovered by hippies in the 1960s when hotel development began along the beaches of Sanur and Kuta. Such tourist resorts are today found everywhere, but close observation shows traditional Balinese life continues.

Sanur is the stage for a colourful daily pageant regulated by the moon and tides.

The curtain rises at dawn when people wade through the lagoon netting tiny fish to sell to hotel aquariums. Act II begins around seven when fishermen put to sea in long-prowed gadjaminas. At eight the bait-men start burrowing in the beach for worms and within an hour only their hats are visible above the sand. The stall-people unlock their shacks around nine and lay out batiks and kites for passers-by, then at noon, the satay-people start cooking kebabs over charcoal fires. Interval occurs during the hot afternoon, but when night falls the ‘shrimp men’ arrive with lamps and nets when the black lagoon ripples with lights as they tramp back and forth flipping prawns into baskets on their backs. Finally, at high tide the bait men return to fish until dawn when the play begin all over again.

Superstition inhibits the Balinese from having more contact with the sea. They believe the coastal lowlands are inhabited by spirits of the underworld, that the middle-world is for humans and that mountains are the dwelling place of Gods.

The best way to explore Bali is to hire a motor-scooter and follow ‘byways’ to its rural heartland. On either side, terraced rice-fields climb like stairways to the sky, ribbons of water cascade over velvety banks and armies of ducks sift the mud for eels. The Balinese are Indonesia’s best rice-growers and wherever you look, farmers are either planting or harvesting their crop.

On the road to Bedugal, about 1,500 metres above sea level, you notice a nip in the air. Rice gives way to cabbages and coffee and fog closes over the sugar-cane. Reindeer-like cattle graze on the hillsides and a Peter-Pan like child sits on a rock playing a wooden flute.

Suddenly the rippling cords and pounding drums of a gamelan fill the air as rounding a bend comes a procession of people bearing flowers and fruits to be offer at a temple ceremony. In their midst a barong covered in shaggy hair, flashing mirrors and jingling bells leaps and dances like a circus prop. A mythical lion, it is revered as an antidote to evil. Then as abruptly as it has appeared, the procession disappears through a wall of bamboo.

Only two miles separate Bali and Java, but the Balinese have preserve their unique form of Hinduism against Islam practised elsewhere in Indonesia. Each village has several temples where gods and spirits must constantly be appeased and every house has a shrine where offerings of rice, flowers and fruits are made together with fragrant incense.

Balinese-Hinduism aims to maintain a balance between good and evil. Life moves in harmony with nature which manifests itself in natural artistic expression. In villages such as Mas and Ubud, every family member is an artist carving, weaving and making silver jewellery.

Painting is the most exuberant local talent. In past times it was channelled into large, decorative panels in temples and palaces, for religious scrolls and astrological calendars. A good example is the exuberant ceiling of the Kerta Gosa, Hall of Justice, in the eighteenth century capital of Klungkung.

Ten days is an ideal time to spend on Bali. Ten weeks later you may want to stay ten years, or even a lifetime as many foreign artists did - among them Walter Spies, Rudolf Bonnet and the Australian painter Donald Friend.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

HAIL TO THE HAT !

Since I activated the website about my forthcoming book - TRAVELS WITH MY HAT - several people have enquired about “The Hat”of the title.

The original blue denim hat, noticed by Her Majesty on our tour of Arabia, was wrenched off my head during a monsoon squall and sank beneath waves in the Bay of Bengal.

The present Hat has been my travelling companion for twenty-five years. And I still wear it. Most recently on a visit to the Western Sahara. But now that it has become famous - its picture is on Twitter - I'm naturally nervous that it too, might fly off when least expected.

Hopefully not. For it must be around for any book signing when I shall certainly wear it. I wouldn’t dare not.

Hail to The Hat! Some of the countries it has visited include India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tahiti, Oman, Egypt, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Tanzania.

Like the original one, it was bought at “River Island” in Oxford Street, London which now sells hideous headgear. No sign of anything in blue denim ...

Images of The Hat from left to right:

1 In the Luangwa Valley in Zambia

2 Tiger-fishing on the Zambesi

3 With Masai elders in Kenya

4 On safari in Amboseli National Park

5 When the Hat was young--- Federated Tribal Agencies of Pakistan

www.travelswithmyhat.com

THE LEGENDARY LYRE FROM UR

Excerpt from Chapter 4: Middle East Nightmare

The next day, I took a taxi to the Iraq National Museum founded by Gertrude Bell, the great Orientalist, political officer and archaeologist who spoke both Arabic and Persian. Here under a single roof, I could finally feast on treasures from Mesopotamia and forget the crude public relations exercise of previous days. And evidently satisfied I could do no harm, the minder sat on the steps smoking a cigarette, leaving me free to explore alone.

The museum was deathly quiet except for my footsteps on the wooden floor. I passed the Warka Vase, a giant alabaster vessel engraved with processions of naked men bearing offerings to Inana, the Sumerian Goddess of Love and War. Glass cases displayed ancient pottery and sculptures, cuneiform tablets from Sumerian and Babylonian times, and stunning stone reliefs from the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Khorsabad. Among this abundance of priceless objects, I wanted to find the Golden Lyre from the burial chamber of Queen Pu-Abi, who lived in the celebrated city of Ur.

Excavation of the royal tombs by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1929 had discovered a munificence of grave goods: a head-dress made of golden leaves; extravagant necklaces and belts; a chariot adorned with lioness’ heads in silver along with golden rings and bracelets. The legendary lyre had been found standing upright against a wall of the pit. Beside it lay the bodies of thirteen maidservants with beautiful adornments—retainers sacrificed to serve their mistress in another world.

‘It would seem,’ said Sir Leonard ‘as if the last player had her arm over the harp, certainly she played till the end.

Suddenly picked out by a shaft of sunlight, I saw the lyre encrusted with lapis lazuli and with the gold-bearded bull on the front representing Shamash, the Sun God and hopeless at anything musical myself, I shivered with excitement as I imagined Sumerian fingers plucking its strings some 5,000 years ago.

My thoughts were interrupted by the minder creeping up behind me. In order to reach Hatra before dusk, he indicated we had to leave. Now! He was the same pock-faced man who had shadowed me since my arrival in Baghdad and the only time he spoke on the journey north was when we passed Tekrit.

‘Saddam Hussein!’ he said, jerking a finger at the town where Saddam was born in 1937 and where Saladdin with whom the Iraqi president liked to compare himself, had been born 800 years earlier...

From a visit to Iraq in 1980: c. Christine Osborne

THAI SPICY PRAWNS from the Travelling Hat Recipe Book

Serves 2-3

16-18 medium-size green prawns, shelled but leaving tails

3 medium cubes garlic

1 tps sambal paste

Black pepper and salt to taste

Coconut milk

Lemon

Thai fish oil/Nom pla

½ tin of chopped tomatoes

Butter

Cup Basmati rice

Place the crushed garlic, pepper and sambal in a tablespoon of

butter and cook for one minute, shaking the skillet all the time.

Cool slightly, then throw in the prawns and cook quickly

until pink on both sides. Do not overcook them. Remove to cool.

To the skillet, add a tea-cup of coconut milk, a tea-cup of tinned tomatoes, a

splash of fish oil, and a squeeze of fresh lemon. Stir and heat, but do not boil.

Add the prawns and stir until hot enough to serve.

Serve with boiled rice.

Garnish: chopped coriander leaves.

BIRD-WATCHING IN YEMEN

Excerpt from Chapter 5: No Mocha in Mocha

That evening I found two tourists in the hotel restaurant. The first I had seen on either visit to Yemen, they were male, middle aged and sipping soup.

‘We're from the Suffolk Birdwatchers Club,’ said one, his broad grin revealing a gap in his teeth.

‘I’m Herb and this is Norman,’ he indicated his sandy haired companion.

‘We`ve been doing avifauna checks on the Tihama,’ said Norman. ‘The rest of our group has left, but we want to do some spotting on the plateau. You’re welcome to come.’

I met Herb and Norm in the lobby next morning. They were wearing khaki safari gear, multi-pocketed gilets, and canvas hats. I was in brown linen trousers and a cream high necked shirt, as worn by Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. The taxi-driver had on jeans with a sleeveless sheep’s wool jacket and a black baseball cap with Baltimore Orioles on it.

‘Siddiq, friend America,’ he said clearly pleased I had noticed.

The rugged central plateau of Yemen abounds in birdlife. Creeping about the giant euphorbias with expensive Luger binoculars, Herb identified Arabian babblers, amethyst starlings, rollers, shrikes, warblers and weavers for Norm to record in a log-book.

The driver looked on as though they were mad. A task for small country boys in Yemen is to scare birds off the crops. Beginning at dawn, they spend all day seated in the fields firing stones at them from homemade catapults. The iridescent throat of the grey rock pigeon makes it an easy target.

‘Look!` said Herb, whistling through his teeth as a beautiful bird alighted on a fig tree. It was a shimmering paradise fly-catcher which our driver, deftly miming the action, explained will nip off its tail in order to confuse a predator.

After an hour’s bird-watching, Herb and Norm spread out a tartan blanket and sat down with a thermos of tea. It was still too soon after breakfast for me and I wandered off along a track where a tall woman was climbing up from the ravine.

She wore a smock over black harem trousers embroidered at the ankles, gold bracelets and a piece of muslin wound around her head securing a bunch of marigolds. A goddess of the coffee terraces, showing no sign of astonishment at our meeting, she walked up and kissed my hand all in a single movement, and continued striding up the hill.

Travels With my Hat for publication 2012.

I NEVER TRAVEL WITHOUT:

My small pillow. You can`t buy one. They`re considered dangerous to infants. It`s a tiny pillow I took off a Philippine Airlines flight. With this soft little cushion, I can sleep anywhere. And have done so. In hotels when the pillows were hard as concrete. On a customs bench in Morocco. Deck class sailing down the Red Sea. It goes wherever I go. I`ve lost two on my travels. One left behind on a coach trip to Paris. A second blew into the Bay of Bengal, when I stood up from my deck chair to escape a tropical squall. I found replacements on other airlines. I don`t feel bad about taking 3 little pillows in a lifetime`s flying.

The second item I make sure is packed is my personal cake of soap in a plastic container. This is Roger & Gallet which comes in a variety of heavenly perfumes - tea-rose and gardenia are my favourites which bring a scent of home. Especially when the bathroom is horrid.

The third item I never forget is a pareo. Also known as a sarong, a kikoye or simply a cotton wrap. This is a patterned length of cotton material, worn to great effect in Polynesia. But also in East Africa, coastal India and Dhofar in Oman. The pareo, which I wore daily when working at the Club Mediterranee in Tahiti is a multi-purpose garment. It can be worn in a variety of different styles as a wrap; used as a towel after a shower or a swim, as a sheet, when the night is hot, or stuffed with ice and placed on your head for a hang-over.

Item number four is my swimming costume. I pack this as hand-luggage with my pillow and pareo so if stuck somewhere warm, I can always swim. On two occasions, once off a flight in Singapore, another double-booked in Bombay, I was the only passenger able to enjoy a dip.

Finally, I always pack a small bottle of scotch. This used to go in hand luggage but with the 100 mill rule, it now travels in my case. Whisky acts as a reviver when you reach your new hotel room. Or in event of drama on your travels. It can be drunk neat if you haven`t water and the Scots would say it doesn`t need ice. Delayed 36 hrs at Khartoum Airport, my small flacon of whisky kept body and soul together when the only alternative was tinned mango-juice.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

RIDING THE KHYBER MAIL

"......My introduction to this lawless part of Pakistan was in a Sydney cinema we called the `flea pit`. My father, a big fan of Lauren Bacall, had taken me to see her and Kenneth More in the adventure film North West Frontier with a poster depicting the stars above a picture of the Khyber Mail.

Twenty years on, I am about to catch the legendary Mail, which is scheduled to leave Peshawar Cantonment at nine o`clock and to arrive in Landi Kotal, on the Afghan border, three hours later.

My companion is Habib Afridi, a member of the Adam Khel clan within the formidable Afridi tribe whose territory includes the Khyber Agency. He is a lovely man, tall and softly spoken, and I find it hard to imagine the Afridis struck such terror in British soldiers stationed on the Frontier. But they did. Attacking Landi Kotal in 1897, they defeated the famous Khyber Rifles, and only a counter-attack by 35,000 British soldiers, was able to retake the strategic site.

For our day out, Habib is wearing a grey *shalwar kameez while I have teamed a floral shirt purchased at Galleries Lafayette in Paris with fawn trousers. And naturally I am wearing my hat. But we have not chosen a good day for our journey up the Khyber. It`s the start of Eid-ul-Adha and hundreds of tribesmen are travelling home to walled compounds in remote villages.

Boarding at Jamrud, the gateway to the Khyber, I am swept along in an arsenal of Pathans waving guns, and hawkers brandishing cigarettes, sugar-cane and hard-boiled eggs. Chickens, even a cow, are bundled on board as we pull out of the station, with me seated in the LADIES ONLY carriage pretending I`m Lauren Bacall, and Habib riding in the front locomotive.

Our five carriages are pulled and pushed by two 1920s steam engines; two, because unable to turn in the narrow gorge, the front engine must run back to gain momentum when the rear one acts as prop. In one place, the ascent is so steep that all the passengers leap off and scramble up the hillside, to re-board when we steam into the station above.

The train traverses 34 tunnels between Jamrud and Landi Kotal, the summit of the pass, and seated in total darkness, with soot pouring in the open windows, I reflect on other rail journeys I have made. The Chittagong Mail in Bangladesh, the Nairobi-Mombasa Night Express and the Indian Pacific crossing of the Nullabor are memorable, but none matches the Khyber Mail for excitement.

In the longest tunnel, a prankster pulls the emergency cord, no doubt to frighten me, the only woman on board, but as we grind to a halt, the joke`s on him; at the last stop, I have run along the track to join Habib, and we can see by glowing coals in the furnace.....

Excerpt from Chapter 6: Travels with my Hat

90,000 words and pictures, for publication autumn 2010.