That's our job. It always has been -- and always will be. For me that wonder is in the remarkable stories of ordinary men and women who are separated by borders, fear, emigration, even time and death. In collecting their stories I try to enter and empathise with their lives. In retelling them I tread the boundaries between fact and fiction.  In writing - and you reading - I hope to draw together their - and our - divided worlds.

Click on the left-hand links to find excerpts from my six books, explanations as to why I wrote them and a few remarkable videos.

What else? Click above for the latest news and Asia Overland hippie trail pages. Also for the knowing me page with a biography, links to travel writing worskops and a My-Family-and-Other-Characters photo gallery (with Winston the pig, Aunt Zita, the Reverend Hector, Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie). You can check out the FAQs and great travel-related hot links there too. On the right you can sign on to my mailing list to receive news of books, broadcasts plus the latest newsletter. And if there's anything you think's missing, just drop me a line. I want to know. This site is here for you.

So click on to motor through eastern Europe in a Trabant with a pig named Winston. Or to sail across the Atlantic in search of a promised land. Or to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and ride shotgun with a Burmese hill tribe warlord. Or to get married in Disney World. Or to fly above mourning and into the blue Cretan sky.  Or even to catch the Magic Bus from Istanbul to Kathmandu along the hippie trail.

Come and join me on a journey.                

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