I listened but couldn’t identify with Ron’s experience. It felt disloyal to do so. Hadn’t Dad been sent up to Orkney to risk his life protecting the Arctic convoys?  Hadn’t he crashed and nearly died up there?  Did he deserve to have his wife stolen, his family disrupted by one of the sailors he protected?   So I suppressed my curiosity. 

Many years later, I grew to love Northern Finland.   So when I spotted  ‘Running with Reindeer’, that described an exploration of the Kola Peninsula,  the destinations of the Russian convoys, over 10 years in the nineteen nineties, I had to find out more.  

But it was the author, Roger Took, who intrigued me.  Why on earth would a sensitive, rich middle -aged man, an art historian and museum curator, an establishment figure, want to spend so long in  what he described as one of the most unfriendly and inhospitable places on earth? 

But Took was a man obsessed.  In just one month, he learnt to speak Russian well enough to get by and arrived alone in the derelict port and abandoned goods yards of Murmansk with its grim government buildings and decrepit five story apartment blocks.   His stated purpose was to find the remnants of the Saami, the Lappish peoples, still living in the far north of Russia, and to discover how much of their culture still survived.  

But there was more to it than that.  Took went out of his way to court suspicion, discomfort and danger.  There was little that was uplifting in his book.   He trudges across the tundra in freezing rain with inadequate shelter and food, he falls up to chest into bogs, he spends a night in a filthy cabin where he witnesses a drunken homosexual gang rape,  he visits restricted inlets where decommissioned  submarines rot, their reactors disintegrating and turning the sea radioactive, he sees mountains devastated by open cast mines and  he records a landscape blasted and polluted by nickel smelting.   He does finds isolated pockets of Saami, but realises that their traditional way livelihood of reindeer herding, hunting and salmon fishing was ruined collectivisation, their culture corrupted by alcohol and prostitution. 

His is a grim tale with no redemption.   So why wasTook so attracted to this, the most devastated and corrupt aspects of civilisation that he returned again and again.  That question bothered me increasingly as I persevered with the turgid academic prose of his punishing narrative.  What was it about this guy?  There was an unrelenting darkness about him.  But why?  I had to consult Google.  

I was shocked to discover that Roger Took is in prison.  There is a long article, written for The Spectator in 2008 by Carol Metcalfe.   He had bragged in his blog about being part of a group of men, who raped and murdered a 5 year old girl in Cambodia.  Although Took dismissed this as fantasy, there were scores of incriminating images on his computer and he had been paying his step grand-daughter to have sex with him.  Wikipedia lists difficulties in his marriage, another woman he could not forget, sexual frustration and a fragile, sensitive personality.  Any review of his book, which was nominated for an international prize for travel writing, has been removed.           

 So were Took’s expeditions deliberately punitive or just an escape from the perversity of his privileged lifestyle?   Was his book an attempt to purge himself of some dreadful shame? 

What made Took a paedophile?  Did an unduly close and controlling relationship with his mother make committed  mature relationships with women seem too threatening.   Did the difficulties he had in his two marriages instigate the need for the kind of controlling sexual relationships, he could procure only  with emotionally needy and vulnerable children?  Did his celebrity and privilege create a sense of entitlement; the feeling that he could indulge his perversions?  

His book fails to provide any answers to these questions, but the final chapter does allude to encounters with teenage prostitutes in Murmansk in 1998.  Ron had also mentioned picking up Russian women in Murmansk; the Winston Churchill House of Friendships catered for the needs of foreigners,  but few sailors ever realised the terrible price the women would pay for friendship.

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Don’t get me wrong.  Angkor Wat is part of a truly magnificent and beautiful complex of temples that was hidden away in the jungle for many years until rediscovered by the French archaeologist, Henri  Mouhot in 1859.   It is a candidate for the 10^th wonder of the modern world, the advertising posters proclaimed.   Some of the temples, particularly the Roulos group and Bateus Reay are so lovely especially when viewed in the evening when most of the tourists have gone, the sun is low in the sky and birds are singing – mellow russet stones amid the dense green foliage.   And then there’s the Jungle Temple, its walls and columns completely overwhelmed by the giant muscular roots of  strangler figs, a mysterious and eerie setting for the film Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie. 

Angkor Wat is not so much a church but a house for the Gods.  There are no big spaces.  People just walk round and visit, maybe talk to the monks.   The carved friezes on the outer wall depict scenes from the Ramayana as well as beautiful illustrations of everyday life ten centuries ago. 

I always marvel at the sheer complexity and sophistication of life so long ago.  It reminds me of the triumphant columns of ancient Rome,  the reliefs on the Temple in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt or the magnificent Assyrian reliefs in the British Museum, but you need time to reflect on such things away from the press of tourists and the self congratulatory chatter of Nak, our increasingly irritating guide. ‘I am very fit, I love fast cars, I go cycling.  I cycle back to Siem Riep in 20 minutes.’  Oh really, that’s very good, I reply for the umpteenth time, hoping he might just pick up the note of sarcasm in my voice and desist.  But he’s completely oblivious.  ‘I very strong and handsome.  I love beautiful women.’  ‘You rascal, you.’   

And then there are  the terraces of the Leper King (so named because his image has been overgrown with moss and bits of toes and earlobes are missing) and of the Elephants in Angkor Thom.  These are situated at the edge of a massive arena, larger even than the Circus Maximus in Rome and dominated by massive carvings of Garuda (which until now I thought was just the name of the Indonesian airline). 

What is interesting is not the differences of the Angkor Wat complex, but the connections, the similarities with other cultures; ancient Rome, classical Greece, the Egypt of the pharaohs, the Tigris- Euphrates valley, and of course numerous sites in India.  It’s like convergent evolution; the same patterning is built into human culture but may come to fruition at different times without any obvious link between them.  But could the Khmer kingdom have been aware of classical western civilisations?  Might there have been a link through India; Alexander the Great?   It makes you think, but you have to have time to think.  You need the mental space to discover things for yourself, to pause and reflect.  Another group of flag waving, chattering Korean tourists completely negates that.  But Nak was getting the message.

So I now know what the Nagas are and appreciate that the churning of the sea of milk by the Gods pulling on opposing nagas around Mount Meru threw up all kinds of mythical creatures including the beautiful half Goddess Apsara dancers.  I understand how each ritualised step of the Apsara dance carries a particular emotional significance.  I know about conflicts of Vishnu in his incarnation as a monkey general against the demons.  But I struggle to find any deeper significance in these myths.  So they’re relegated to the back burner.  I know about the life of Buddha, his birth into privilege, his marriage to a princess, the great renunciation, the long years of meditation under the Boddihava Tree until he attained the beatific state of Nirvana.   I find out that Angkor Wat was a garrison for the Khmer Rouge and another temple a field hospital.  I understand how the temple complex was built between the 8^th and 12^th centuries by workers in exchange for their food and lodging and that there were only 4 classes of people at the time; soldiers, farmers, workers and monks – a bit like in mediaeval England.  Facts at the periphery of awareness become fleshed out awaiting  further enlightenment.      

But I guess that’s what travel is about, opening the mind to possibilities, doing some work to try and understand the context, associations and meanings; a  voyage of self discovery.   I’m afraid a guided tour can prevent that.  It’s a bit like eating fast food; it disempowers and is not very nourishing, but if time is short, it can at least provide an awareness for further  study .  So despite Nak, twenty thousand Koreans and Japanese, the whining post card sellers, the guilt at being a rich tourist bastard,  I guess this was a positive experience.  Next time I shall do it free lance and on a bike.

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The Railway Man is a remarkable story of courage and forgiveness.  John McCarthy, who was himself kept hostage in Lebanon under dreadful conditions, describes it as ‘an extraordinary story of torture and reconciliation.  I turned the last page weeping tears of sorrow, pride and gratitude. 

As a boy, Lomax was fascinated by engines.  He would travel miles across country just to see one of his beloved machines.  Later he espoused religion with the same dedication.  He was quiet boy; he got on well enough with other boys, but was never happier than following his obsessions.  In 1939, he  joined  the British Army as a signaller, and was  trapped by the Japanese with tens of thousands of other soldiers in Singapore in 1942 and assigned to work on the Burma Siam railway that would carry Japanese territorial ambitions to India.  Despite the lack of food, filthy conditions, exhausting physical work in full tropical sun and casual brutality of some guards, the men alleviate their plight by growing or stealing food,  dreaming up escape plans and constructing makeshift radios, by which to learn the progress of the war.   Lomax continues to derive solace from his contact with the railway and his beloved engines. 
But after a tip off,  the Japanese discover their radio and the map Lomax has drawn.  In the book, he dispassionately describes the  beatings with pick-axe handles, during which both arms are broken and his hips and back damaged.  He is then handed over to the Kempitai, the Japanese Gestapo, who imprison him in a small ant-infested cage in full sun with only heavily salted rice to eat and subject him to prolonged interrogation interspersed by spells of torture and near drowning by waterboarding.  He learns how to raise his pulse to dangerous levels and persuaded his captors to move him to hospital in Changhi where he survives, a living skeleton, until the Japanese surrender.

Lomax was psychologically damaged for years after the war.  As his physical condition improved, people ignored the effect of their trauma.  In India on his way back, one mem’sahb commented that after a rest, he must be longing to do his bit and get back to active duty.  His young wife was more concerned by the privations of rationing than his experience in the far east.  Without validation and acknowledgement, it was like it never happened and he withdrew into himself.  After another thirty years, the marriage failed. 

With the help of Patti, his second wife and Helen Bamber of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Eric Lomax finally managed to talk about his experiences.  Patti is given a copy of Crosses and Tigers by Nagase Takashi, in which he describes the bravery of a young signals officer he interrogated.  It is Lomax.  Also traumatised by his experience, Nagase has become a dedicated anti-war campaigner.  The two meet.  Nagase is overcome with emotion and Lomax finds it in himself to forgive him and even accept him as a close friend. 

The Railway Man is indeed a remarkable book.   Lomax is remarkable, not for his courage.  Courage is inconsequential when the outcome is inevitable.  It’s when you choose to do the right thing even though you know you will suffer and even die for it that real courage is needed.   No, it’s not courage that Lomax shows but endurance and will to survive.  That takes amazing qualities or hope and faith.  People have written of how love for their wives or their God maintained  their hope. I wonder if Lomax’s  obsession with railway engines also provided that focus of imagination that transported him out of the real hopelessness of his circumstances,  distracting him and providing the certainty that sustains him through the most dreadful pain and privation.  It’s the doubtful, the needy and the insecure that succumb.  You can put up with anything as long you have faith in something,  because by transference you can then believe in yourself and gain distance from a grievance that allows real forgiveness.  To err is human, but to forgive is divine.  When people are desperate and fearful of their lives, they are capable of anything.  The environment of war breeds inhumanity. Nagase hated what he was doing but was terrified of the reprisals if he refused.  Nagase has atoned for his guilt. It was easier for Lomax to forgive him, but few would have done that. 

As the Buddhists teach, forgiveness sets you free.

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Bird How is a simple construction, such as a child would draw; a rough stone box with a gabled roof , two windows and a door painted green.  It stood there, timeless and impassive, when William strode the coffin route from Ambleside with Dorothy scuttling in his wake, to take out a lease in Grasmere.  Restless beasts still bumped and sighed in the shippon and provided underfloor heating when Ruskin worried about industrial pollution from his perspective on Coniston and Mallory practiced the crags of Great Gable.    

The National Trust rescued the house in 1963. The conversion retains the character and feel of the original dwelling.  You enter into a simple living space, a chair a settee, a table and a fireplace with plenty of wood.  The kitchen is behind a curtain and two bedrooms are at the back, one larger with twin beds painted sky blue, the other with a double bunk. 

This accommodation has no bathroom. You wash in the sink or take a bowl onto the terrace.  But after a  muddy descent from the summit across Great Moss and down through the treacherous gorge,  what bliss to wash naked in the rain and pour warm water from the jug onto the shivering spot between the shoulder blades and then run inside to dry off by the chattering fire.     

There’s a chemical toilet in the shippon.  It doesn’t smell but the bucket has to be emptied into the cesspit outside; it’s that rustic.  We might have stayed three nights in a hotel in Grasmere for the same price, but the luxury would have spoiled us with excess and depleted our initiative. Bird How just provides shelter and basic necessities, but accepting the challenge to make a home in the wilderness creates a frisson of adventure and self sufficiency that can never be achieved in a hotel or on a package holiday.  Only don’t forget your sleeping bag and a spare box of matches.    

This article was short listed for The Guardian’s Travel Writing Competition and pubished in today’s paper.  

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It was just a few yards from the river, on it’s own small peninsula, where the dark stream from the forest joined the larger flow of water coming down from the lake.  Trees grew all around it, birch, spruce, and tall graceful pencil pines that caught the sun on their chestnut trunks and the shimmering aspen.  The forest floor was covered with bilberry, heather, small bright green ferns that made intricate patterns like an oriental carpet,  sphagnum moss, horsetails and Ledum paludris, swamp rosemary.

The hut was a raised roofed box, 15 foot square, constructed of  broad horizontal planks of pine, weathered grey and caulked with resin.  To the right of the door was a  single window divided into four squares of glass.  In front, the roof was extended over a veranda and supported on corner posts.  The floor was loose and springy sending cups tumbling off the rough wooden table.  A wooden railing ran and hand height half way round.  Access to the veranda was by a tilted block of cemented red bricks.  There was a blackened metal coffee pot hanging from a hook to the left of the door. 

 To the right of the hut was a simple open woodshed with a lozenge shaped opening that tapered towards the floor.  Stacks of logs stood to the side of it and more logs were arranged against the wall of the house.  A narrow path led to what looked like a tilted wooden sentry box with a door and a wooden latch, the sort of casual contruction, Australians call a ‘dunny’!   

 A key was hidden in a round hole above and to the right of the window and the door opened with a subdued and respectful click.  The space inside had the kind of rustic cosiness, I enjoyed as a teenager; my den!   The walls were rough and lined with fire- blackened planks of wood.  The pine floor was new as were the rugs, a homely touch.   A stove rested on a metal platform in centre of the room.  It was the sort of stove you would find in a sauna, an oblong box with doors and topped with large pebbles, and a black chimney that was cemented into what looked like a big tin box below the ceiling.  The red paint on it was faded and flaking. 

 There was a wooden bunk in against the back wall to the right of a simple oblong window that looked back into the forest, and another adjoining bed on the right wall.  On the left hand wall were shelves and cupboards which held mugs, matches, paper towels, red plastic bowls, a large saucepan for boiling water and smaller cooking pot with a metal handle.  A small axe, its blade protected in a leather sleeve hung up besides saws and knives, an assortment of fishing equipment and three pairs of carpet slippers.

There was a table to the right of the door.  It was made of pine and varnished to a smooth shine. I could ‘see’ pencils, notebooks, a sketch pad, my favourite pen with the silky nib, a field guide to the flowers and trees, a slim volume of poems, some trophies, a stick chiselled by a beaver, some polished stones, pine cones, a small branched antler.

I could work here.  I’d sit there and gaze out of the window at the river, the white clouds over the dappled greens of the swamp, the play of light on the pines, lulled by the breeze in the trees, the occasional muffled riff  of water and the soft lilt of a forest bird. There is a melancholy peace about it, a place to rest, a creative meditation.  

 In the evening I’d make a fire and cook the pike I had managed to hook earlier. I’d mix up a sauce from the  mushrooms that sprung up after the rains and perhaps, if was lucky enjoy a dessert of cloudberries.  Then I would sip my coffee, gaze into the fire and let the river, the fire and evening work their spell.

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Dark eyed, tired, seemingly bored with life, they lumber salivating out of the forest dark,  enticed  by the sound of the tractor and the scent of one hundred kilograms of salmon hidden under logs in four caches. 

Ursus arctos  may have a muzzle like a dog, but it also bears some resemblance to us.  That’s why we infantilise them, find them endearing like characters in children’s stories; Teddy Bear, Winnie the Pooh!  They can stand upright, but they walk on all fours, not like dogs and horses that spring on tiptoe as it were, but the way we might walk on all fours. Bears have proper feet and knees in the same place as us.  And they use their hands in the same way as we do, as tools, pulling logs away, leaning on their elbows to hold their food, sitting on the ground and scratching themselves.  They have cute round ears positioned like antennae at the top of their broad heads, their eyes are close  together in the front of their face, giving them a short sighted binocular vision and their mouth, seen from the side, is set in a permanent smile.  No wonder we find the thought of them cuddly and endearing.  They are anything but.  Their body is massive, at least 200 kilograms, and has a hump like a bison between the shoulders.  Dark of pelt and intent, one swipe from those big muscular arms could knock you unconscious, their long claws could rip your stomach open and a hug would crush the life out of you.  But they are shy creatures.  They avoid humans unless they get between them and their cubs or I suspect, their food.     

Only the males are present at tonight’s feast.  The females, smaller and honey blonde, come earlier in the season, attracted by the scent marks the males leave on the birch trunks.  Couples even make love in the restaurant; and believe me, the earth truly moves. But then the females go to have their cubs and don’t return with them until the next season.  If the cubs tagged along, the males would attack them. I doubt if they ever took any of their feast back to the dens in the forest; they seemed too intent on gorging themselves.  Maybe the males have little to do with cub-rearing anyway.  In any case, it seems likely they are so seduced by salmon, they no longer protect their mates and young, though family groups are seen in the forest.  .   

Left to themselves, bears tend to feed at dawn or dusk or night.  And they eat everything,  leaves, berries, hay and carrion.  They rip open ants nests for eggs, hives for honey.  They will fish for salmon in the rapids like Kodiak Bears in Alaska, take young deer and have even been known to attack an elk.  Bears are such massive animals, it must be difficult to get enough energy and nutrients.  With no males to help, how do the females get enough food for the survival of the next generation?       

The season is soon over.  Arola is on the arctic circle.  The first snow comes in September and before that the hunters.  Eero stops feeding them at the end of the July.  They must learn to survive and avoid the guns.  Then as the snow begins to settle more thickly, they trudge across the frontier under the soldiers’ watch towers and hibernate in Russia.    

   .

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Exhausted with the pressure of  work, the bustle and clutter of city life?  Then don’t head for the crowded beaches of  the Mediterranean,  follow the geese; go north to Finland.     

Arola farm is in the region of Eastern Finland known as Suomussalmi, just south of the Arctic Circle and within sight of the watchtowers of the Russian Federation.   It lies on the edge of Martinselkonen National Park,  a Tolkienesque wilderness of dark lakes, vast open forests of spruce, pine and birch, and broad expanses of grassy bog; a magic land of moss and lichen.  Here, over a hundred miles away from the nearest town, you can wander all day in complete solitude, your every step monitored in the tree top conversations of Ravens, the laughter of woodpeckers and the mocking call of the Cuckoo.   

Suomussalmi is on the migration route.  Many of the birds that overwinter in England, such as Whooper Swans, White fronted and Brent Geese pass through here en route to their breeding grounds in Siberia. Others such as Fieldfares, Redwings, Brambling, Waxwing and Golden Plover breed up here but are much more colourful, extravert and  flambuoyant than they are at home.  Bramblings,  small dull finches with stripy wings and narrow white rumps when glimpsed flying up from Cambridgeshire fields on dark wet winter’s, stand sentry in their smart black and red uniforms and announce their presence in long drawn out whistles. And one morning while canoeing up river, we came within a few feet of a Red Throated Diver,  late for the wedding in his light grey morning suit, black and white striped shirt and crimson cravat.  A few Siberian species have also taken up residence in Suomussalmi; Bluethroats, Cranes and Siberian Jays.    

But Eastern Finland is not just for the birds.    If you go down in the woods, you’ll, be sure of a big surprise. Martinselkonen is a refuge for the few remaining really large European mammals. There are Brown Bear, Elk, Wolves, Lynx and Beaver in the forest.  It is just like being in Canada.  Arola has its own bear hide, at the side of a forest clearing a few miles from the farm.  Every night, Eero, our host, leaves 100 kilos of fish and elk meat out under a log.  With their own five-star restaurant,  the bears, normally shy, venture cautiously out of the forest in the long light nights often bringing their cubs with them to feed, play and even make love.  European Brown Bears are enormous creatures.  The male weighs in at over 200 kilos and stands over ten feet tall.   The female is not quite that size, but when they make love, the earth really moves!    But this is no zoo; these are wild animals.  In the hide we speak in whispers and cover our skin to disguise the smell.  Bears have a very good sense of smell.  The slightest whiff of human presence and they gallop off into the forest.  

Bears are not the only creatures to come to Eero’s restaurant.  Occasionally a Wolverine, a kind of large polecat, will venture out for a snack if he thinks the coast is clear.  And a pair of White Tailed Sea Eagles balance on the topmost branches of a spruce tree, fending off attacks from the gulls and waiting until the bears have gone to grab some fish. 

The Sappinen family have farmed in Arola for generations, even throughout the chaos of war when this region was occupied first by the Russians and then by the Nazis.  In 1939 it was Eero’s mother, Lempi, who bundled her children in a blanket, put them on a sledge and escaped across the thawing river to warn the people of Juntusranta that the Russian soldiers had come across the border.  In Finland, as in many parts of Europe, life for small farmers has become increasingly difficult.  And so Helena, Eero and their son Jeru gave up the farm just two years ago and decided to open their farm for tourism.  Visitors can stay here at any time of the year.  Helena once worked as a nurse in Plymouth and speaks English fluently.  She can accommodate up to 11 people in two houses; the old farmhouse and Hevonkuusa,  a lovely log cabin, 500 metres down the track by the lake.  The latter comes with its own smoke sauna and diving platform.

A week in Arola will broaden your mind.  All you need to bring is a love of the wilderness and a sense of adventure.  Children will love the excitement of it. There is so much to see and do.  Trekking in Finnish National Parks is very easy.  The trails are well maintained  and marked,  the traverses across the swamps are dry and boarded and there are comfortable huts equipped with stove and fuel and clean toilets, where you can stay  overnight at no cost at all.  In the summer you can canoe up river to the rapids, trek all day in the forest, watch the wildlife and return for a wonderful sauna and nerve-tingling dip in the river. But in the long winter, when the forest is transformed into a wonderland, you can ski all day along forest trails and return to your log house, warmed by a stove constructed from the local dark soapstone.  Or perhaps you would prefer to go by sledge, pulled by teams of eager huskies. 

Self catering is an option,  but it would be a mistake not to enjoy Helena’s wonderful traditional Finnish cuisine.  Locked in by snow for half the year and with the nearest store 5 miles away, self sufficiency is the by-word.    So berries picked late in the season are boiled and bottled; the delicious dark crimson blue berries swollen with sweetness,  the creamy cloudberries with their subtle hints of butterscotch,  cranberries from the bog and my favourite, the wonderful combination of sweet, sour and bitter flavours of the lingonberries.   Mushrooms are also stored over winter.  Some need to be boiled twice to remove the toxins and then dried.  Others are pickled in brine. Made up into a sauce, the rich earthy flavours are a delicious complement for the tender sweetness of fresh pike or the meatiness of Elk.  Fish is caught locally all the year round.  In the summer, swarms of roach can be caught by net, cleaned and cooked slowly in salt, onion, olive oil and lemon and bottled with tomato.  In the winter, pike can be caught by rod and line through a hole drilled through the thick ice of the lake.    Elk is shot during the brief hunting period in October and kept frozen overwinter.  It tastes like beef, but does not have the fat content.   Reindeer is smoked and salted and is lovely as midday snack in the forest between two slices of freshly baked rye bread.  Beetroot, cabbage and potatoes grow quickly during the light nights of the Finnish summer and can be pickled and stored through the winter. 

To book a holiday at Arola, visit the website at www.arolantila.susmussalmi.net or write to Helena Sappinen at Arolantie 5, FIN 89920 RUHTINANSALMI. (Tel/fax  +358 8 734 403 ). Travel is remarkably inexpensive.  Flights from various airports in England to Helsinki can cost around £200.  Then take a flight to Kuusamo (£80 return), from where Jeru will collect you and drive you the one and half hour journey to the farm.

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Mulu’s cries add a chill to the low afternoon sun.

The villagers had been on the hillside opposite the ambo, the basaltic stele that we were attempting to scale, all day, laughing and shouting cries of encouragement. But now it was late, night was imminent and they had begun to panic. If we spent the night on the mountain, the spirits would surely kill us.

We had started well. There was a clear diagonal line up the western face that must have marked the site of the original steps. But this soon ended and we were forced to muscle our way up a greasy chimney to a precarious ledge, occupied by bellicose baboon, who, after much lip curling and smacking, turned, and with slow disdain, presented his rump and strolled back the way he had come.

It was too dangerous to reverse our route in the dark. We would have to bivouac on the narrow ledge. The problem was that we only had the fly sheet to shelter under if it rained and just two sleeping bags between the four of us. Mike and I wedged our legs into one and tied ourselves to the base of stunted tree, but in the middle of the night I awoke to find our ties had worked loose and the entrapped bottom halves of our conjoined bodies were suspended over a four hundred foot drop. I nudged Mike, who turned over, propelling us further out of our centre of gravity. It looked as if the villagers prophecies were about to be realised. But no. Gently I awoke him and moving very cautiously and hooking our arms around the tree without uprooting it, we managed to pull ourselves up. Although we strengthened our ties, we had no more sleep that night.

Mount Wehni was in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, not far from the ancient capital of Axum. It had not been climbed for four hundred years. Then it was a prison. The Emperor kept any challengers to his throne incarcerated in the huts on the top. The only way up and down the perilous pillar of rock was a wood and rock staircase, but that had collapsed. Cut off from supplies in their inaccessible eyrie, the prisoners and their guides perished.

In 1966, as a second year medical student with a yearning for adventure, I and a group of like-minded friends organised The Cambridge Medical Expedition to Ethiopia to carry out a survey on the prevalence of the debilitating parasitic illness, schistosomiasis, in areas of economic development. While we in Addis, we met a climber, Dave Prentice, who was on a personal mission to climb Mount Wehni and needed a few more foolhardy romantics to help him realise it.

We didn’t succeed. By midday on the second day, we were still a long way from the top. Reluctant to spend another sleepless night on the side of the mountain and concerned about our lack of water, we abseiled down.

The villagers welcomed us like spirits returned from the dead and prepared a banquet. There were large black glazed jugs of tej, a kind of honey mead, a bowl of we’t, a spicy lamb curry and plates piled high with injerra, a pancake made of the sourdough prepared from tef, a coase flour made from the seeds of a grass that grew in the highlands. We tore off pieces of injerra and used it to scoop up the we’t, sluicing it down with an infinite supply of tej. As the night wore on the villagers entertained us with songs and dances. We staggered back to our tent boisterous and happy at 3am. It was a feast, I shall never forget.

‘The Queen of Sheba’ is the one of a small number of Ethiopian restaurants in Britain. Situated on the corner of Fortess Road in Kentish Town, it is not posh, but it has character and the food in delicious. A strong aroma of incense greets you as you enter a dark candlelit interior. Plain wooden tables and chairs are placed around the small corner room. Amharic crucifixes, spears, shields, black earthenware jugs and lamps adorn the walls. A strange, haunting Ethiopian music is playing. This restaurant manages to recreate in Kentish Town, the atmosphere of a hut on the road to Lalibela. Time Out calls it a funky juxtaposition of ancient and modern.

‘The Queen of Sheba’ is is a family run business. Mother is the chef, father runs the accounts and the daughters, beautiful dusky temptresses with wild curly hair and high boots, serve at tables.

The menu features traditional Ethiopian classics, spicy meat or vegetarian we’ts, served on injerra, which has been cooked over steam and has the appearance and texture of a damp dish cloth but a delicious slightly acidic taste that complements the salty richness of the we’ts. There is also Kitfo, the Ethiopian equivalent of steak tartare, a delicious beetroot salad, spicy spinach and cottage cheese, and Kantegna, injerra toasted in butter and hot spices.

Ethiopian meals are rich in ceremony. The main course, which is often shared by 2 to 4 guests, is served on a large metal tray covered with a mesob, a conical rush cover, which is removed with a flourish to reveal a large flat disc of injerra covered in a variety of meat and vegetarian we’ts. More rolls of injerra are stacked up on the side. You eat with your hands, just as we did 40 years ago at the feast at Wehni. It is a pity they do not serve tej in Kentish Town, but the strong Ethiopian lager, Castle, has a good back of the mouth bitterness that works well with the acidic injerra.

There is no dessert, but it is essential to experience Ethiopian coffee.

Coffee is highly prized in Ethiopia. It was, according to legend, discovered in the highlands (see my blog, Frisky goats and dirty cats; the serendipity of coffee, 8th August, 2008). It is served with elaborate ritual. First the waitress arrives with freshly roasted coffee beans smoking on a metal spatula and presents it to each of us to smell. These are then taken away to be ground with cardamom seeds and a small piece of cinnamon bark and put in a glazed black coffee pot. Boiling water is added and the pot is placed on a rush ring on a metal tray together with two small cups without handles, a bowl of sugar and a small clay pedestal surmounted by a tablet of glowing charcoal upon which is smoking three small pieces of frankincense.

I sip my spicy coffee, waft the incense into my nose, close my eyes, hear again the haunting melody of the flute, the rhythm of the tabor, the excited chuckle of conversation and I am transported from north London to a balabat’s tukul on a ridge in the remote highlands of Ethiopia, where I celebrate with friends our miraculous deliverance from the spirits of Mount Wehni.

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