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There used to be a joke about the definition of a World Bank expert: someone who had flown over the country in question at least twice, preferably once in daylight.

I was in the gym last Tuesday, cycling like a hamster in a wheel, when one of the boxing instructors came up for a chat. “What do you think of Tyson, daktari?” he asked.

Next time you pass a florist or garden centre in the USA or Europe, stop for a moment and think where those flowers originated. All of them were once wild flowers and were transported to the ‘Western world’ over the last century or two, where they were propagated, selected, bred and multiplied so they could adorn your house or garden.

The far northeast corner of Bangladesh pokes an uninspiring finger into India’s West Bengal. The landscape differs little from the rest of the country: a carpet of rice fields, more rice fields, scattered settlements and bamboo clumps. Flat as a paratha. The patchy tarmac road north of Panchagarh got progressively worse and eventually I stopped my Land Rover and gazed around me. I was hoping to see the the Himalayan foothills, less than 100 km away, yet even on a clear day co

"Excuse me, Sir" asked the controller of the baggage scanner at the airport as he viewed a large mass of something opaque, "What are you carrying in your luggage?" "Soil", I replied. "What are you doing in Rwanda?" "I am the dendrologist for Victory." That tends to be a conversation stopper so he shrugged and went back to his screen. In fact, I had tree seedlings in bags of soil in my suitcase for reasons which I shall explain...