Three weeks ago I was sitting in the back of a Russian-built tank as it sliced its way through the tundra of Siberia's northern Yamal Peninsula.
I was part of an expedition north of Salekhard, the only city in the world to straddle the Arctic Circle's 66th parallel, to a camp where the nomadic reindeer herders known as Nenet had set up their chums, or tents. We had already been driving for many long hours, and now we were faced by a rising river that had to somehow be crossed if we were to make our way back to Salekhard and then across Russia's vast interior to Moscow, by train, and then, finally, home.
The Nenet and Russian drivers in our convoy surveyed the scene nonchalantly. They smoked cigarettes and conversed. One of them waded into the water, ice-cold even though it was summer. Their jagged, strident Russian dialect swirled around us in an incomprehensible fog. What was going on? Would we make it across? Were we doomed?
I wasn't concerned about any of these things. Indeed, I had never felt so relaxed in my life. Here I was, traversing one of the most sparsely-inhabited parts of the world in a form of transport used by Russian troops during the Cold War. I had spent four nights sleeping on reindeer skins on the floor of traditional Nenet chums and swatting tundra mosquitoes the size of flies. I'd witnessed the harrowing slaughter of a reindeer, and had accepted the Nenets' offer of a piece of raw meat slashed from its bones and dipped in the blood that had pooled in its abdominal cavity.
And now I stood on the banks of a raging river feeling contented and at peace, because everything that had passed, everything that was now happening and everything that was still to come was glorious, priceless material. And that, as writers know, is what makes for enthralling stories. Without compelling copy, the page remains resolutely empty.
But compelling content comes at a price: contrary to popular belief, travel writers are not paid to travel; we are paid to write. Our living can only be earned once the words have been placed in careful formation, one after another, on the page.
Certainly, we are for the most part hosted by operators, airlines and tourist organisations. But travel is not the payment we receive in lieu of actual cash, for if that were so we would