Annual grumpiness.

We’re well into November. Sorry to state the obvious but it means we almost a month away from the shortest day - in the northern hemisphere. Oh lucky people south of the equator! Here, 

light is increasingly precious at this time of year.

I know there are people who love the winter. (I know only because I have a good friend who loves nothing more than wrapping up like an Eskimo and striding out up a hill in any weather, and returning to a glass to mulled something by a roaring fire. She would live in Scotland if she could, and revel in the cold and the dark.)

Many of us struggle. And I think we need to distinguish between our winter struggling - whinging at the performance of putting on layers of woollies only to find you’ve lost your gloves again, the fact that evenings seem to begin at four o’clock when the lights go on - from those who suffer from SAD.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a full-blown winter depression. It is very different from annual grumpiness. I am reluctant to get out of bed on grey mornings - but I can do it. I don’t enjoy being weighed down by thick coats and hats and gloves and scarves - but I can do it. It’s fine to not like winter, but we manage it even if it comes with obligatory grumbling. Many SAD sufferers even lose the impulse to grumble.

So next time I witter about hating the cold and the damp and the dark, and how I need to go away in January and February to escape the worst of it, you have my permission (metaphorically, of course) to stamp on my frozen toes and remind me how lucky I am. I have seasonal grumpiness. I am truly fortunate compared with those whose minds and bodies want nothing more than to hibernate for three months every year.

Everlasting, the ebook!

Well, 'tis done. It's been hard to find the headspace to disentangle my Malawian exploits and reorganise them into a coherent narrative. Only time will tell if I've managed it.

On top of the writing challenge - and without going into too much ‘poor me’ detail - I'm moving. 

People move all the time. They get stressed and they get over it. Well, that's the plan. But it's been the unfortunate context in which I've tried to unscramble my Malawian diaries.

But this book felt important - more than some of the others. This is much more than ‘woman has a great time in Malawi.’ It was a trip that challenged me physically - for the first time I wondered if I really need to spend hours bouncing around in a truck while being driven up a dirt track in the rainy season. I also had an interesting encounter with termites (well, interesting in retrospect. At the time I was busy picking them out of my ears, and my nose, and from by shirt-front …)

However, the real challenge of this trip lay in its questioning all my ethical assumptions about the role of aid agencies in tackling apparently intractable poverty. From the day I arrived I met people with strong opinions - everyone had ideas, but no one had solutions. What I found most upsetting was nobody seemed to see the purpose of a career in overseas aid as working themselves out of a job. 

Given that I met almost as many opinions as people, it was difficult to unpick them all and write about them with any sense of narrative. My solution was simply to provide accounts of many of my conversations, to show how one idea built on another in my own thinking, and then leave it to you, dear reader, to reach your own conclusions.

Behind all this travelling and thinking - was Everlasting. He has agreed I can put his picture on the cover of the ebook, and to use his name in the title. He is an extraordinary man, and it was a privilege to spend six weeks with him. And something pretty special happened for him, too - so he won't forget this trip either. So, more than anything else, this little ebook is a tribute to him. 

Readers in the UK can find it here. And if anyone wants a copy to review, please let me know.

Cave paintings from Malawi.

Any idea what this is:

I know, it's not instantly obvious. But how much that is created these days is going to survive for 10,000 years?

For this is a cave painting from Malawi. Men and women lived in these caves, hunting and gathering, and painting on the walls. There are spears and hoes - so we know a bit about their tools. There are animals - deer and zebra. There is a wonderful giraffe, which I can't show you as I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole thing in one picture. But the painter must have had some sort of ladder (or there were several people sitting on each other's shoulders!) to reach about 5metres above the ground to paint the head. The guide suggested that it was simply decoration, to make the cave more homely.

What stunned me most was the sheer existence of these paintings. There are eight sites, close together - suggesting that several families lives alongside each other in these caves. They're reached along a dirt road that is often impassable during the rainy season, so I was lucky to get there. They are found in a granite outcrop on the lower slopes of some significant hills - my guide (the faithful Everlasting) believes there must be many more yet to be discovered. There may be a metropolis of paintings in the mountains.

But it's more than that. These paintings gave people pleasure. The same pleasure that I get from the pictures on my walls and photographs of my family. Just like the people who lived here, 10,000 years ago. We're not so very different.

I know our teachers work hard, but here in Malawi it's beyond tough!

I made it down from the heights of the Nyika Plateau, to spent a few days on the northern shores of Lake Malawi. I began in Karonga, not far from the border with Tanzania. It's a bustling town, thriving on trade from the north. But - though it's the rainy season - the rivers are dry and fields parched. Maize is brown and wilting. The World Food Programme will need to step on or people will go hungry here.

Further south, around Nkhata Bay, there has been more rain and the maize is flourishing. As are the pineapples, mangoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, sugar cane ... over 80% of Malawis are dependent on the food they can grow for themselves. But there is rarely enough to share, and no structure (that I can see) to share bounty in one part of the country with famine in another.

I was also privileged to visit a secondary school for girls - precious here, as too few girls continue their education into their teens. I spoke with two teachers, comfortable with classes of fifty students, in low brick-built blocks scattered between the trees. There is a library (though a student told me it was not well-stocked), a domestic science room, a computer room (though no internet access), and a full curriculum - including agriculture.

Two students showed me their dormitories. (As secondary schools are few and far between, and populations scattered, boarding is essential for most). The blocks are divided into small sections (when I was working I saw bigger prison cells) each with two bunks and four small storage spaces for suitcases. Mosquito nets are provided - but too few are used as these little spaces get so very hot. Malaria, it seems, is just another African hazard. There is a block with showers, and outside sinks where girls wash their own clothes.

These girls are the lucky ones. Although in theory women have opportunities in Malawi, in reality almost all these girls will go back to their villages and marry. The head girl told me that when she leaves school she will help her mother to run her business - buying second hand clothes by the ton and selling them in the markets. So she will, at least, have her own money to spend. But university ...

However, I did have my picture taken with the teachers and three students - and they've agreed it can appear on the internet. They made me so very welcome.

And, following that, I managed to visit a primary school, where a teacher was doing his best with a class of 130 five-year olds. Somehow he was still smiling.

Earthquakes, and yet more earthquakes.

I can't believe I'm blogging about earthquakes again.

It feels as if the earth is very unsettled at the moment. Volcanoes are erupting. There are tremors all round the Pacific rim. And now the huge quakes in Japan and Ecuador.

I'm sure we've all seen the pictures. Sometimes I wonder if we don't see so many pictures that they  lose their capacity to shock. The collapsed buildings. Men and women, their heads thick with dust, weeping in the streets or scrabbling in the rubble with their bare hands searching for missing children.

One of the things I've learned, in all my travelling, is the universality of human needs. All over the world, men and women need people around them to love. We all need enough to eat and a safe roof over our heads at night. We all celebrate our rites of passage (births, deaths and marriages) by eating together, and often with dancing. We all punctuate the year with festivals (more eating and dancing).

Our differences - of skin colour, of gods, of the stories we tell to explain our existence - are insignificant beside the fundamentals of our samenesses.

So these people, hurt and frightened, have the same needs and feelings as you and me.

But what can we do? Weeping into our own beer isn't going to help. Not many of us can leap into a plane and fly across the world to help dig people out or help in the rebuilding.

Some of us can dip into our pockets, spare a pound or two. The house-build project had proved what can be achieved if we all work together.

And some of us can travel to places that - at first glance - would seem uninviting after such a disaster. One of the big lessons from my last trip to Nepal was the need for tourists to carry on visiting - these countries need foreign money now more than ever. So next time you've got the atlas out and are wondering where to go next, maybe it's worth thinking about countries that need you. For the money you spend while you are there all goes into rebuilding an economy - and therefore the lives of families with needs and feelings just like ours.

From One Jungle to Another

I've left the trees behind and made it to the jungle of Kuala Lumpur. It's not my favourite city - full of new skyscrapers, glass twinkling in the sunlight, with echoes of the old city squashed into precious corners. The traffic clogs the streets and belches fumes. The main escape, for people who live here, is in the air-conditioned shopping malls, where you can buy Levis, and pants from Marks and Spencer's. I've been up the Petronas Towers, to peer down on it all. Green space is precious here.

I miss the jungle of Fraser's Hill. I spent hours walking the trails, tramping deep into the rainforest. Although the leaflets suggest the paths are wide and easy - they fib. There is much scrambling, over tree roots, down banks to cross tiny streams that race down the hillsides. Everything smells damp - with occasional whiffs of animal.

For the jungle is teeming with wildlife. I was rewarded by the sight of two young gibbons playfighting - too far away to even think of a photograph. Besides I was mesmerised, as they threw themselves around in the trees and never fell to the ground - how did they do that? And I saw wild boar - from a safe distance. I saw the holes where tarantulas hide, ready to prey on unsuspecting birds. I saw an ants nest hung high in the trees. I saw wild ginger - that was the only plant I managed to recognise.

And yes, I was bitten by a leech. There's a first time for everything. I can tell you that the thought of it is far worse than the reality. It doesn't hurt - though it does bleed a lot. And it was worth it to see the gibbons.

The morning before I left, I has a long conversation with the Chinese cook a the hotel. We talked about food, and about the jungle:

'Did you see a tiger?' he said.

'What tiger?'

'Only once, last year, tiger was seen here, at Fraser's Hill. Mostly they live high in the mountains.'

Note to daughters - I promise, I never knew there might be tigers. Being bitten by a leech feels insignificant when I could have been tiger-tea.

Wiltshire's crop circles

In response to suggestions I write more about the UK, here is a snippet about one of Wiltshire's oddities.

Every year, we see an influx of tourists to see our crop circles.

For those of you who've not come across them before, you can find a link to some pictures here. (Why haven't I put any up here - because I don't have any photographs

 I've taken myself, and am not into 'borrowing' anyone else's from the internet without asking. I don't like anyone 'borrowing' my writing, either.) They began as simple circles in a field, and have become increasingly complicated over the years - and some, as you can see, aren't even circles any more.

There are countless theories about these circles.

When they first appeared, over twenty years ago now, there was talk of tiny tornadoes at the foot of a hill flattening crops in a perfect circle. It was interesting that these tiny tornadoes always occurred where the circle could be seen from the road.

Then, given the lack of anyone coming forward admitting to have created them, came a theory of alien invasions, every summer, creating these circles. So, little green men were thought to have a sudden interest in Wiltshire, arriving with plans and flattening-tools, making wonderful patterns in our fields. For those who are committed to this little green men theory - I wonder why they would do that? Is is purely artistic? The little green man equivalent of the Turner prize? Entertainment? Are they practising for some sort of circle arrangement on their own planet?

Alternatively - and there are people who now admit to doing this (though there are those who still stick to the alien theory) - men and women draw diagrams on computers, work out the tools they will need and come out at night with planks attached to their feet and walk through fields flattening corn to make these extraordinary patterns.

These circles bring in the tourists - which is wonderful. And some are truly extraordinary.

But I also spare a thought for the farmers. Even those who charge visitors to walk across their fields to look at them (they rarely charge more than £1) lose a lot of money when crops are lost in this way. It's tough enough, growing food for us all - without what some would call vandalism while others see them as tourist attractions.

Have you ever seen them? And if you are in the camp with little green men, please can you explain what they are trying to achieve when they come to play in our fields?

Reflections on Berlin

I've been home from Berlin for a few days - time to let ideas simmer. Even so I still don't have a coherent view of the city - but I'm not sure there is one.

A disclaimer to begin with - the weather was lovely; and so, given a choice between learned museums and sitting in the sunshine with a beer, well, I'm sorry but the beer won. I also spent hours walking in streets, generally poking my nose into corners. I did the open-top bus thing, and the river trip - but passed on the ancient-ruin museums, even though I know they have precious collections. (I did go to a couple of art galleries, which were wonderful).

And I did some thinking. Freud told us that are all shaped by our histories - both personal and collective. Reflections on my travels suggest cities fit into the same construct. Berlin is no exception.

Berlin's recent history (by recent I mean the last hundred years) is well known and terrible. There is no hiding from the terrors. The city was devastated by the war: rebuilding has been slow, and without avoiding taking responsibility for the bloodshed. The Memorial to the Holocaust is respectful but still shocking even though no secret any more. The years of division echo in the concrete apartment blocks on what was the East Side - though many have been repainted and balconies added so they don't have the run-down, mildewed look of their counterparts in Havana.

The Wall came down in 1989. The city has had twenty-five years to knit itself back together - and continue to acknowledge its past. There are still differences between West and East (there are trams in the East), but they are blurred now. Restaurants proliferate on both sides. Museums cover the history of the whole city.

I searched for evidence of Berlin's piecing together. Someone told me that, just as the Wall had gone up brick by brick, then that's how it had to come down - and how Berliners had to step into their future. Tentatively, curiously, and now with enthusiasm and energy, the city wonders if it dares be proud of itself. Or would that upset those still traumatised by the Holocaust?

It's vibrant, and gusty, and wondering if it is time to be celebrate its recovering or should still be hanging its head in shame for the past.

Maybe it will take much longer for Berlin to get that 'right.' There will always be those who need, for reasons of their own, to see the city self-flagellate. While there are others who are eager to cheer her modernity.

What I took away is a conviction that great divisions can only mend if we listen and talk to each other. There have been ups and downs but Germany has come together without fisticuffs. Which is why it seems important to learn from them. How have they done it? And what can they teach other countries that seem intent on tearing themselves apart?

Answers on a postcard to those struggling with the mayhem in Iraq ...

A post about Iceland

When I wondered, a week or so ago, where I should go now that Madagascar is off the radar, a friend on Facebook suggested Iceland.

I went there many years ago (before digital cameras, so there are no pictures) - so I thought I'd muse on a recollection or two, as I'm not likely to go back in the near future: so this is a present for her.

I was there in June, during the long days of summer. So I went outside to see the sun almost dip below the horizon in the middle of the night and then rise again. It was dislocating, unnerving, waking to daylight and have no idea what time it might be.

I stayed in the south - for various reasons I couldn't get to the north, and I understand it's different, and full of mosquitoes. Reykjavik is a modern city with some lovely wooden buildings and modern sculptures by the waterfront, but the countryside is much more interesting.

It's geologically very new - which has a huge impact on the environment. Where volcanoes have erupted under the ice, carpets of new lava creep the mountainside. When cool, it looks like huge fields of stones (by huge, I mean something that can take a couple of hours or more to drive across - that huge!). These volcanic stretches are grey and bleak, and on cloudy days they are echoed in the sky to give an air of cold but beautiful abandonment.

But it's not all grey. Where grass grows it is fresh and green and precious. The ice (and there is plenty of ice) is blue, except at the edges of the glaciers where it is a rather dirty white. There are magnificent waterfalls - angry and full of water from the glaciers. There are some you can walk behind and find rainbows when the sun shines. And there are some - fed from warm underground water - that are warm, where you can swim.

Geysers, with the distinctive smell of sulphur, remind us of the earth's fragility. There are corners where the crust is so thin that the underworld bubbles and pops.

What is there to do? This is not a country for beaches. But you can ride an Icelandic pony, which has a strange extra stride somewhere between a trot and a canter. (I confess to giggling at a couple of experienced riders who were discomforted by that.)

And then you can go on a skidoo - which is like a motorbike on skis. You tog up in a giant babygro and gloves and helmets. Stagger across and wonder how you'll ever get on the thing (forget elegant). I used not to understand the attraction of motorbikes, but now I get it. That engine pumping between your knees - and you almost float across the icecap knowing that if you do fall off the landing (a thin layer of snow) won't hurt. Well, I suppose it might if the skidoo fell on top of you, but let's not think of that. It's wonderful - all that white ice, the wind in your face, and just a flick of your wrist to make that engine throb and you're racing.

Maybe I'll go back sooner rather than later.

Since you ask ...

Will there be an ebook about my trip to Cuba?

I've been asked a few times - and all I can answer is, please be patient. I've been back a couple of weeks, and begun the process of transcribing my scribbled notes onto the computer - which sounds mind-numblingly dull, but it enables me to highlight the relevant bits and to recall little gems I might otherwise have forgotten. And delete the drivel, of course, and there's plenty of that.

Once that is done, I need to spend time thinking.

Sometimes thinking can be mistaken for faffing.

I discovered, on one trip some years ago, that not everyone understands the verb 'to faff'. It's more than procrastinating, for that can sometimes be fruitful - the kitchen floor might get cleaned, for instance, when you really ought to be writing that synopsis. Faffing is far less directed, or constructive; it is an apparently aimless mooching about which, to the casual observer, might be mistaken for wasted time. I would argue that is can be highly productive, for it is in the faffing time that ideas are allowed out to play - and if we let them be they can realign themselves without any apparent intervention for the player. We can emerge from that faffing time with a story we hadn't seen before.

Okay, I'll dignify it with the name of 'thinking.' For me, it is an essential part of the process of finding the thread to hold any travel narrative together. I can easily offer you a succession of anecdotes; but I want to do more than that - to find the idea, the story than holds it all together. Only once I know that I have a coherent story can I tell you if there will be another ebook.

But, for those of you for whom this is not enough, here is another picture. It is a handbasin, in a the loo in a little restaurant in Havana. There was no water in the tap, so it was not fit for purpose. So it doesn't matter that there's no plug. But hey ho, who needs water when you've a basin like this?

A Grand Tour? With hats?

Val Poore has asked me to blog this. (If you don't know Val - you can find her at her Watery Ways, here.)

Some years ago a daughter gave me a book, not just any book: "The Queen Newspaper Book of Travel" - the 1905 edition. It includes some wonderful advertisements, for cruises, for costumes that do not cockle, for Mrs Pomeroy's toilet preparations, for Ganesh Chin Straps (no, I've no idea what those are either.)

And it tells you all you need to know about undertaking your Grand Tour - where to go and at what time of year, which hotels to stay in, where to catch trains or carriages, how many hats you will need. So I know that 'Avignon cannot be recommended as a winter resort', that 'Rouen is a healthy city for residence on the high ground.' I know that Oberstdorf is '2660 feet above sea level, a climatic air station and whey cure'. (A what?) I know that March is 'probably one of the best months to be out of Great Britain.' The steamer fare to St Petersberg from Hull cost £5 5s. There are maps and routes an illustrations - and it's wonderful.

Would it be possible to do such a tour now?

Yes, it would. Some things would be different - I can't imagine the response to the polite letter to the hotel requesting rooms, so bookings would have to be be email. Travelling by train with Serious Jewellery would be bonkers - though piles of hat boxes might be possible. But the routes - they're still there. The towns and mountains haven't moved since 1905/

So go, said Val - she'd even help me organise it. I am sure there would be a loyal band of you cheering me on.

So why not?

I think a project of this kind needs a sponsor. In Cuba (and on previous trips), once I've paid for my flight the day-to-day expenses are not much more than I'd spend at home. A Grand Tour, staying in Grand Hotels and eating in Grand Restaurants wearing Grand Frocks, would be outside my price range. Stay in cheaper places, I hear you say - and of course that's the sensible way forward. But, even so, three months travelling in Europe, with hats, would be far more expensive than staying at home, and if too many financial corners were cut it would miss the point of trying to recreate the Tour in the first place.

On top of that - the point of it would be to publicise it, make sure plenty of people knew what was going on - and that needs sponsorship. It needs a newspaper, or journal, or publishing company with an advance to fund it. And most of those, as we know, believe that the shenanigans of celebrities make more exciting copy than some woman wandering round Europe with hats, even if she can string a sentence together.

So that, Val, is why it's a dream. But, as you said, it doesn't have to be. You never know ... maybe a sponsor will creep out from somewhere ...

Now I really will tell you about the cobra

Beng Melea is seventy kilometres away from the main sites at Angkor Wat. I went in a tuk tuk. For those who've never met a tuk tuk, it's like a motor bike with little carriage on the back. It has a plastic roof, and decorative tassels to make it pretty, but nothing to protect the passenger from wind, or dust, or even determined rain.

After seventy miles my face looked like Cher's - pinned back, and with a complete coating of dust. I recovered with a soft drink, and then took the wide path towards the temple, past the board which told me which parts of the site to avoid as it is still littered with land mines, past the group of disabled musicians (the way most land mine victims make a living), past the monks, and towards the huge main gate.

A man approached from the right, determined to be my guide. I tried, politely, to tell him I was happy on my own, but he was undeterred. Oh well, it's only a tip he needs. So I followed him into the temple ...

... to find that it has not been excavated. There is a polite boardwalk for tour groups, but nothing to stop anyone crawling through doorways, or clambering over rocks, to explore the place for themselves. My guide leapt over a large crack in a pathway, held his hand out to help me over, and we were off - through pitch-black hallways, over fallen trees, along precipices.

He even took a photograph, to prove I was there:

Once he had his tip, I did it all over again - well, wouldn't you? It was like playing Indiana Jones - though there were times when I looked at a narrow ledge and reminded myself that just because I was allowed to climb all over this doesn't mean I have to. But it was such fun, like finding the place for myself, for the very first time. Do you recall that feeling, as a child, that you really could do this dangerous thing by yourself - climb up that cliff, or swim a whole length, or walk in the river and feel water round your knees? Well, it was like that, all rolled into one.

This shows you the boardwalk, and the sort of things I was climbing over:

And this the sight that greeted me when I peered across the top of a wall:

I was crawling through here:

when I saw a passing guide talking with his group. He was muttering about the history of the place, and how it was discovered in the 1960s, and plans to excavate and clear the land mines.

And then: 'A cobra lives under there,' he said, pointing to the rock beneath my knees. 'But it only comes out at night.'

(Note to daughters. This was much less dangerous than the tiger. The tiger was awake!)

About the cobra

It's been a busy weekend - at the same time as looking after my granddaughter (oh the joys of learning to use scissors ...) I've been at the ebook festival. If you missed my posts, you can find them here - scroll down the righthand side and click on the travel writing link, and they should appear.

I hinted at my encounter with a cobra in my last post here, so I thought I'd better tell you all about it.

How much do you know about Angkor Wat?  You've probably seen pictures of the main temple, with its huge walls (you'll just have to imagine it without scaffolding - it needs attention as so much is falling down):

And the astonishing carvings on the walls, from huge heads like this (it must be twenty feet tall, at least):

 to images of the gods, some of which are much ruder than this:

But there are hundreds of temples - some small and intimate, and others enormous. Some no more than a central edifice, while others have vast walkways where people would live or traders would bring their wares to market. Many have 'libraries' - though I don't suppose you came with your ticket and went away with a book, and most are closed up now.

Most were built by successive emperors, who needed to prove their prowess by building a bigger, more extravagant, more lavish temple with the tallest (did anyone mention phallic?) towers. Does that matter? Not any more, for Angkor Wat is one of the most astonishing sites I've ever visited.

Some are falling down, with trees growing through walls:

And some, at first glance, little more than heaps of rubble:

And then, seventy kilometres away, is Beng Melea. But this post is long enough. I'll tell you about Beng Melea (and its cobra) on Thursday. Promise.

In a corner of Lille ...

It was hot - goodness it was hot. And, given that it was Monday and most of the shops were closed, I had the streets almost to myself.

Which meant I could notice all the quirky things that might normally be hidden in the bustle of city life. For instance, I found a wonderful yellow door, covered in writing. I'm sure it was something to do with the theatre, as there were other theatrical shops around and a sign of a woman with a splendid feather in her hat hanging above the door.

But it was the door that intrigued me, its very yellowness, and all its words.

The problem is: my French is dreadful. So here I need your help. I have here a random four extracts, all scattered in various places on the door - and since I don't know what they mean I have no idea if I've selected nothing but trivia and ignored the deep and meaningful. I suspect these are quotations from plays? If any are truly rude, then I apologise. And, as you will see, the writing crosses lines in the door as if they aren't there, so some bits are quite difficult to see.

Is this something about an outrage? An assassin?

I think I get this - a cousin has said something bizarre - I wonder what? There must be a story there.

Is someone arriving during a quarrel? Why do I need to know that?

This is possibly the most difficult to see - but please tell me it doesn't mean I love your fat bum?

One night in a Homestay, in Northern Laos

Soon, very soon, I'll put the links to Bombs and Butterflies on the side bar of this blog, and remind you of the various places you can find it.

But, while we're waiting for Kindle to cook it, here are two extracts, both set in the Homestay in a village near Luang Namtha. 'Nick' is our guide, and 'Lucy' one of the women I met on a bus.

A Homestay opportunity is one reason I’ve chosen an organised trip to the north of Laos. Finding a home to take you in, when travelling independently, has always seemed a little risky. This way I can spend a night in a village, catch a glimpse of rural life, and hopefully meet local people who will regale me with their stories. I have my pen and notebook ready.

There is a village walk planned, but first we must leave our luggage. . . I slip my shoes off at the bottom of a flight of wooden steps, and begin to clamber, steadily, upwards. Immediately a girl of about fourteen is beside me, taking my elbow. She smiles, steers me on upwards and into a large room. She nods, in a way that asks if I’m all right. She takes the weight off my pack as I slip it off. I feel a bit like an old person being helped across the road. Her motives are kind – and I can see her mother, behind her, grinning her approval at every step. And so I relax any grumpiness at the suggestion that I might need such assistance and accept it with good grace.

‘What is your name?’ she asks.

‘My name is Jo; what is your name?’

It seems her English lessons don’t run to replying, for her next question is, ‘How old are you?’

‘Sixty-two,’ I tell her.

She gasps; her eyes widen. She says something to her mother, who walks across and peers into my eyes. She calls down to a man standing below the house, and he runs up the steps to inspect me. The lass asks my age again, as if trying to make sure she heard right the first time. It is clear I should be dead by now.

I am, I recognise, an exhibit. But it doesn’t matter. In many ways it is an advantage; maybe I can use it as a way into conversations, find out how it feels to be really old here. Questions pile up in my head.

But there is no one to ask. The lass who helps me has exhausted her limited English. No one else in the family speaks a word. I am treated like a queen from a foreign land, when I would rather be able to put my feet up by their fire (metaphorically speaking) and swap stories.

Later, we gather round a camp fire to drink, Lao-style. A small plastic cup is filled with beer and the first person in the circle swigs it down. The same cup is refilled, passed to the second person – and on round the circle. As each bottle is emptied another is opened. And if the crate is finished, someone buys another. Maya has a hygienic hissy fit and will not drink. But the rest of us put Western germ-qualms to the back of our minds. Well, it’s that, or no beer. And it’s a convivial way to drink – though the pressure to throw it down, when you know that the person next to you is already salivating, is strong.

The Lao are very proud of their beer – known as Beerlao. It is made from rice, and is heavier than the hop variety. In fact it is so heavy it is like drinking food. Complan without the vitamins. Or any other goodness, for that matter. And it goes down particularly well round a camp fire.

Children hover behind us – they are never far away. Lucy and I play: we sing Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, and then Lucy stands up to show them I’m A Little Teapot, to universal applause. I flush with the joy of playing with children; and can’t resist that smug shiver which comes with making a child giggle.

It is your turn, we say to them, expecting Laotian rhythms and exotic finger-clicking. The children, led by one boy who has clearly done this many times before, clears a space; even the lads quieten to watch them. They sort themselves into a line; the boy on the end nods and, on his count of ‘one, two, three…’ they burst out with ‘Hey, Macarena’, wiggle their bottoms, wave their arms, sing the song and dance in a display many a party-goer would be proud of. Their spectacle complete, they puff, then look at Lucy and me as if to say, ‘Top that!’

Mercifully, Nick interrupts to tell us that it is suppertime.

So, will I write a book about Laos?

I don't know.

Come on, I hear you say; you must know. You must have pages of journals, photographs (woops, sorry, you had the camera stolen.)

Actually, some people I met are sending photographs, so I'm not picture-less. And yes, I do have two exercise books full of notes.

This was a very different trip from my visit to Nepal. There was no cyclone. No tiger - well, actually, there were tigers, but tame tigers, which is definitely not the same thing at all. But at no time did my stomach go flippy-flop and leave me wondering how I was going to survive this time.

It was a trip full of questions - about the country, and how people live there now, after the years of bombing and then the closed decades of unremitting communism. It was a trip for gawping at astonishing scenery - mountains and rivers and waterfalls. Of listening to roosters at dawn and tree frogs as the sun set. A trip of wandering into local markets where there was nothing for sale but a few root vegetables and dead rats. A trip with monks rubbing shoulders with tourists whose behaviour can best be described as rapacious. A trip of wandering around towns and villages, trying to find someone who could speak enough English to answer my endless question, and meeting mainly tourists - a few, like me, trying to make sense of the place, and most of them young and looking for adrenalin thrills and parties.

My task, now, is to unravel all that and see if there is a story there. I shall transcribe the diaries and then begin to untangle them, pick out the highlights, look for stories, and maybe even draft a book. Then I shall show it to others - and ask, is this good enough?

Bear with me - this will take time. I'll let you know how I get on.

Me and the elephant, I'll never forget ...

After almost a week of rural Laos, Luang Prebang is a surprise. It is an old French colonial town – so remote that it took longer to reach here up the Mekong from Saigon than the journey from Paris to Vietnam. The climate is kind; the rivers are gentle; and there are plenty of temples for the pious.

There are few French expats here how – though there is a small, thriving community of Australians and New Zealanders running restaurants and hotels. The backpackers pass through, spending their days in a kayak or caving, and their evenings in the bars. And there are tour groups with suitcases who wander into the night market and barter for woven pashminas.

And me – well, I rode an elephant. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I did my homework – I could have spent a day learning how to be a mahout, but was warned that some of those elephants work all day, every day. Elephants doing the shorter rides can rest from the afternoon heat. (I should add that I’ve met people who enjoyed the mahout training and felt the elephants were well cared-for.)

My guide arrived to take me – on a motorbike. Which was, um, interesting, and a little bumpy in places. I hadn’t expected a boat along the river to the elephant sanctuary, but – that was fine, too. The elephants wander through the jungle close to a waterfall. I lingered, taking in the music of the waterfall, and the astonishing milky-blue colour of the water. The air was sweet; butterflies hovered; the occasional bird twittered.

And so to the elephant. I clambered (there is no elegant way to get on an elephant) into the wooden seat on its back, and off we lumbered into the jungle. We’d not gone far when the mahout asked, ‘Would you like to sit on the neck?’ Well, wouldn’t you?

Elephant hide is rough, the consistency of wrinkled feet of octogenarians. And covered with tiny black hairs which are not-quite bristles. Where a horse’s head perks upwards, an elephant’s dips down – and so the line of sight is automatically down towards the ground beyond. I sat firmly upright. (There is nothing to hold on to but a loose bit of rope around her neck.) She flapped her ears, and for a wonderful moment I thought that was to hold me on – no, she was ascertaining that this was a complete novice on her neck and turned for home. The mahout shouted a bit and she trundled on her way.

Elephant shoulders are bony things. With each stride her shoulder blades swung from side to side, and her huge muscles rippled. Not being over-padded in the bottom department I felt every stride. When she veered to the side I thought I’d fall into jungle mud. When we went down the riverbank into the water I thought I’d topple over her head.

And when it came to getting off – that involved throwing myself onto the platform. (Though I did better than the lass behind me, who needed two men to lever her off!).

It was time to go home – I felt every throb of the diesel engine in the canoe, and don’t even think about the potholes on the motorbike.

But when can I do it again …

When daughters fly

I have four daughters. This piece is prompted by one of them, but applies to them all.

And sometimes she flies. No, I don't mean fly the nest. Not that moment when you leave her in the car park at uni knowing she has cases to unpack. Leaving her full of excitement and terror with all the gizmos she might need but no sensible knickers. And you go home to an empty house and you're not sure if you like it, or if you should like it, so you make her favourite meal for tea and wimper a bit and then play your own music and read your own books and no one interrupts and you realise you could get used to this.

No - I mean flying in the air. In an aeroplane. A huge metal contraption that, looked at objectively, shouldn't be in the air. That smell - of stale air, and yesterday's supper. That are filled with people who, at best, could be overweight and at worst (I disregard the terrorism option) are sick with beri beri or typhoid or mysterious green-frothy disease which everyone will catch. Daughters sit in this thing, above the ocean, for hours. With no realistic means of escape. Then they have to land - on something as tiny as a runway and come to a careful halt, without so much as bruising a finger!

I know what you're thinking. I agree with you - it's fine for me to go flying, head across the world when I feel like it. There are countries to explore, adventures to be had. And I have no problem with them having adventures - even adventures in unlikely places. I do not need to keep the world away from them.

I just wish she could get there a different way. Not in a plane. I know the statistics - she is safer in a plane than crossing the road (though I have been known to reach out to hold a hand crossing the road, in an unthinking, maternal way, and been put back in my place!). But there's something about planes, all those people crammed together in that tiny space, and no plan B should something go wrong. I quite enjoy it for myself - but shudder each time I leave her at the airport.

I know I shouldn't check the news. I'd hear soon enough if there were a problem. I know there is no point looking up in the sky as if just wishing her well could keep her safe. At least I have the sense not to watch Airplane.

Welcome Home, Anna!