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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...

“Very flat, Norfolk” Noel Coward wrote in Private Lives (though I prefer the legend that he said it to the Queen Mother after she referred to a Royal weekend at Sandringham).  Norfolk certainly has that reputation; flat and remote with big skies.  North Norfolk, where your correspondent generally deploys his quill pen, is not flat; it is rolling, and wooded, and really rather mysterious and beautiful.  Move east from here though and there is a definite feeling that the land i

Now is not the time for charity. At least officially, as Governments swap aid for arms. In extreme cases whole aid departments have been wiped out. In February this year the website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ceased to exist – apart from a terse statement announcing ‘notification...

I was driving down to our rain-forest patch last week while still on a main road to Kisumu on the eastern shores of Lake Victoria, when I saw a large crowd on both sides of the road. I assumed it to be an accident but I saw no motor vehicle. I slowed, stopped the car, got out and spotted a small snake on the side of the road surrounded by an excitable crowd looking fearful and agitated. I walked straight...