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People often ask me about Australia. It doesn’t matter where I happen to be—Vietnam, India, Morocco, South Africa—there seems to be no end of interest in the massive but tiny country that Paul Keating once memorably described as “the arse-end
We pulled out of Amornsup Village in Nong Chok, in Bangkok’s far-eastern boondocks, in the late afternoon when its residents begin to stir. In the central square, barefooted teenagers played soccer on the dusty concrete—the sun’s anvil throughout most of
In 2012, on the 26th anniversary of the evacuation of Pripyat, the city at the heart the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, I boarded a bus with a group of tourists and headed out to the site of the disaster. I had
Even before I arrived in Varanasi, I knew I wanted to reread the Varanasi section of Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. A freelance writer is always on the lookout for potential story ideas that will allow him
I was supposed to be in Raxaul, on the Indian side of the Nepalese border, at eight o’clock in the morning. There had been difficulties from the get-go. The Mithila Express, the direct train from Kolkata, had been fully booked
The Ganges flow faster in Rishikesh. It is the first thought I have as I cross the Ram Jhula bridge to the eastern bank of the river, where the ashram ghats lead down to the water. I was recently in
From Janpath Road in the centre of Delhi, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts appears almost deserted. I’m at the wrong gate, but the security guard manning it lets me slide through anyway and points me in the
For tor the past ten days, whenever I have wished to go into town, to interview a separatist leader or take in a clash between police and young protesters, I have first had to play the tourist for a moment.