About Mark
Travel is an invitation that beckons random experiences into our lives and forces us to come up with novel responses - if only to survive. The result is a form of day to day creativity born of necessity. Having lived and worked on five continents, I've interviewed witch-doctors in West Africa, nibbled chocolate strawberries with two US presidents, survived half a dozen KGB interrogations, been trapped in sea ice with Greenlandic seal-hunters, hitch-hiked a truck across the world's deepest lake (while frozen of course) and (co)written well over 60 travel books. Having travelled in Iran and the ex-USSR many times over the past 30 years, I'm fascinated by the mismatch between perceptions and realities. And having joined the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Prague, I'm especially intrigued by how far official and lived narratives of history can differ. I love hiking, wine & beer, unscripted conversation and trying to get my head around new thought processes embedded within different languages and religious philosophies. I've presented documentaries, host a podcast (focussed on Azerbaijan), written about the culture of my adopted country, Belgium, and am probably best known for my 1990s opus Asia Overland which gave pre-internet backpackers key information for crossing a whole continent with the most meagre of budgets. Don't try that book's visa tips these days or you'll be arrested all too rapidly.
