Anything disappoint you? That the Burmese/Myanmar government is still military and tyrannical after 20 years in power, and the Burmese people so poor and without representation.

Our book reviewer, Don George, recently said that you seem happier in your new book than you were when you wrote The Great Railway Bazaar. Do you agree? I don't know about "happier," but I am more patient, because I have more time and more money, and I have done this sort of thing a few times. The Great Railway Bazaar trip was my maiden voyage as a traveling writer and I was anxious for it to succeed.

How has the travel experience changed in your lifetime? In some places, immensely. It's so easy to go to Albania and Sri Lanka now. But it's much harder to go to the Congo, Somalia, and Afghanistan, for obvious reasons.

Do you still enjoy travel—or has it become a busman's holiday? I take all travel seriously and always keep a journal, no matter where I go. But as I get older I miss home more.

What's your preferred mode of travel? The train—because I can read, walk around, sleep, talk to people, enjoy a sort of cultural experience, and get off anywhere I wish.

What's the single most crucial thing to take on a trip? A very small shortwave radio, to alert you to world events, the possible horrors of the place you're in, and to give you something to listen to in the hours of the night, when you're alone in the dark.

In your writing, you tend to focus on individuals that you meet. Why? I can't describe places in great sweeping generalizations. I need to speak person-to-person. I describe India and other places as having "the accessible poor." This is not the case in many other places. America, among others, has inaccessible poverty. I often ask Indians and Thais and Burmese and others: What's your name? Where do you live? How many children? How much money do you make? And so forth. Try asking those same questions in Appalachia; Jackson, Mississippi; East St. Louis; or areas of Los Angeles or Brooklyn.