“Being stopped by the Chinese army was fairly hair-raising,” says Bill Marr-Johnson with a chuckle. “We had come across a military manoeuvre — tanks rumbling up and down, field guns dug in. They kept us for three hours. We were on edge because we had no idea how they were going to treat us.”
That was on a three-week trip through Tibet, staying at a mix of hotels and truckers’ stops with metal beds in concrete-floored dormitories. “They were fine,” he says, “the only problem was the long-drop toilets, which are never cleaned.” His other recent expeditions have included visits to Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia (the would-be autonomous state between Russia and Georgia), China’s Taklamakan Desert, and many of the ‘Stans.
They are the sort of destinations and travellers’ tales any returning gap year student would be delighted to have under their belt, but Mr Marr-Johnson is not on his way up to university. He is 72.