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When I crossed Asia with my friend Peter Fleming, we spoke to no one but each other during many months, and we covered exactly the same ground. Nevertheless my journey differed completely from his.

Romantic Orientalism was fascinated by the color and excitement of a powerful culture, and nearly always approached its subject with love.

A brief visit to Nepal started my insatiable love for Asian art.

Those of us lucky enough to fall in love with Asia know that it's an affair that's as long as it is resonant.

My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.

Well I travelled quite a lot in the east, and one of the things that impressed me greatly was the buddhist notion of the continuity of things, the wheel of life which is what we're talking about, the ever turning wheel.

It's a massive compliment to me to be known in Asia because Asia is the way forward in football, along with the Middle East. I believe that strongly.

In the Sixties, there were no guidebooks to Asia, at least none that suited young shoestring travelers. No one on the hippie highway carried a copy of Fodor's 'Islamic Asia.' The route to spiritual enlightenment wasn't revealed in the pages of the latest Baedeker. Intrepids were on a journey of spontaneity and reinvention.

Often, before returning home, I would take a long and roundabout way and pass by the peaceful ramparts from where I had glimpses of other provinces, and a sight of the distant country.

It is said the boundless steppes of Asia gave flight to tales of heroes and heroines because the conditions there are so harsh.