I might have been a dentist, or a public man, but for that first sight of a larger world.

I left Christopher at Marseilles. He was going to Berlin to see Frau Wassmuss. England looked drab and ugly from the train, owing to the drought. At Paddington I began to feel dazed, dazed at the prospect of coming to a stop, at the impending collision between eleven months’ momentum and the immobility of a beloved home.

Thrush, a schoolmaster, is also on his way to Kabul, by the southern road. He told the Afghan Embassy he was looking for adventure, at which Shir Ahmad, always anxious to oblige, suggested he should pose as a Russian spy and then save himself from being shot by producing a letter which Shir Ahmad would give him for the purpose. Christopher and I met him this morning, as we were discussing the importance of comfort on our journey. He said he preferred discomfort, reveled in it. I know the type: they die on one out of sheer inefficiency.

In the old days you arrived by horse. You rode up the steps on to the platform. You made a camp there, while the columns and winged beasts kept their solitude beneath the stars, and not a sound or movement disturbed the empty moonlit plain. You thought of Darius, Xerxes and Alexander. You were alone with the ancient world. You saw Asia as the Greeks saw it, and you felt their magic breath stretching out towards China itself. Such emotions left no room for the aesthetic question, or for any question.