We came back to London and the sun was out. After the heat and the stickiness and the long afternoon lulls of the tropics, suddenly the tumble and chug of the Tube, then rolling suitcases down still-waking morning streets, then the silence of a top-floor flat. There was a bite in the air under the blue sky.

Such a frenzied, hectic dash about Southeast Asia, and hardly a moment to think. Of elephants, of dumplings, of curries galore, there are stories to be told.