Question: When is a freak not a freak? Answer: When she feels normal. I was in my late forties before the realisation came, very, very slowly, starting as a ridiculous-seeming suspicion that gradually crystallised into an exasperated certainty. Many people think of me as a freak.

By middle age one should be well aware of one's public image, given a way of life that makes such an accessory unavoidable. But if what an individual does feels normal, and if people are decently reticent about analysing you to your face, it's quite understandable that for decades you see only your self-image, vastly as it may differ from the false public image meanwhile gaining credibility.

The freakish thing is, of course, not me, but the modern world - from which I, like millions of other normal folk, need to escape at intervals. Those of us born with the wandering instinct, and not caught in a job trap, can practise the most effective form of escapism: a move back in time, to one of the few regions where it is still possible to live simply, at our ancestors' pace. To describe this as returning to reality would be absurd; for us the modern world is reality. However, escapist travelling does allow a return to what we are genetically fitted to cope with, as we are not fitted to cope with the freakishly hectic, technological present.

Hence the notorious 'pressures', paralleling our marvellous conveniences. We have reduced physical effort to the minimum; everything is 'labour-saving'- transport, communications, entertainment, heating, cooking, cleaning, dressing, marketing, even writing (they tell me) if one uses a repulsive-sounding thing called a 'word processor'. Yet the effort of coming to terms with this effortless world is too much for many of us. So we get ulcers, have nervous breakdowns, take to uppers and/or downers, gamble on the stock exchange - or travel, seriously, for several months at a stretch.

Today's serious travellers are often frustrated explorers who would like to have been born at least 150 years earlier. Now there is nowhere left for individuals to explore, though there may be a few untouched corners (in Amazonia?) accessible only to expeditions. But the modern hi-tech expedition, with its two-way radios and helicopters on call for emergencies, naturally has no appeal for escapist travellers. Among themselves, these lament that their traditional, simple journeys have come to seem - by a cruel twist of the technological spiral - paradoxically artificial. A century ago, travellers who took off into the unknown had to be completely isolated from their own world for months or years on end. Now such isolation is a deliberately chosen luxury and, to that extent, phoney. Had I died of gangrene in the Himalayas or Simiens or Andes, that would have been my own fault (no two-way radio) rather than a sad misfortune.

So the escapist traveller is, in one sense, playing a game. But only in one sense, because the actual journey is for real in a way that the modern expedition, with its carefully prearranged links to home and safety, is not. Whatever happens, you can't chicken out: you are where you've chosen to be and must take the consequences.

Here some confusion arises about courage. There is a temperamental aspect to this issue: optimism versus pessimism - is a bottle half empty or half full? Why should your appendix burst or your bones break abroad rather than at home? Optimists don't believe in disasters until they happen. Therefore they are not fearful and have no occasion to display courage. Nothing puts my hackles up faster than being told I'm brave. This is nonsense - albeit significant nonsense. Where is our effortless civilisation at when physical exertion, enjoyed in remote places, is repeatedly mistaken for bravery?

Genuine travellers, far from being brave, are ultra cautious. That is an essential component of their survival mechanism and one of the dividing lines between them and foolhardy limelight seekers. Before they start they suss out all foreseeable hazards and either change their route, should these hazards seem excessive and the risk silly, or prepare themselves to cope with reasonable hazards. Thus what looks to outsiders like a daring journey is in fact a safe toddle - unless you have bad luck, which you could have at home. Six times I've broken my ribs; the last time was at home, falling off a ladder. The other times were in Afghanistan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Peru and Madagascar. You could say I have an unhappy karmic relationship with my ribs.

Recently I was asked, "Why is independent travel seen as so much more of an intellectual challenge? And what does it take to cope with it?" That flummoxed me. I have been an escapist traveller for more than 40 years without it ever occurring to me that I was meeting an intellectual challenge. A stamina challenge, usually; an emotional challenge, sometimes; a spiritual challenge, occasionally. But an intellectual challenge? I don't see it. Unless by intellectual one means that slight exertion of the grey cells required to equip oneself more or less suitably for the country in view. Yet surely that is a matter of common sense, rather than intellect?

Granted, equipping oneself includes a certain amount of reading; but this, in a literate society, scarcely amounts to an intellectual challenge. I refer only to reading history, not to any sort of heavy sociological or political research - unless of course you happen to fancy that sort of thing, in which case it will obviously add an extra dimension to your journey. Otherwise, for the average traveller, enough of current politics will be revealed en route, should politics be important to the locals; and in those few happy regions where domestic politics don't matter, you can forget about them. But to travel through any country in ignorance of its history seems to me a waste of time. You can't then understand the why of anything or anyone. With this view some travellers violently disagree, arguing that all preliminary reading should be avoided, that each new country should be visited in a state of innocence and experienced purely subjectively. The mind on arrival should be a blank page, awaiting one's own vivid personal impressions, to be cherished ever after as authentic and unique. Why burden yourself in advance with loads of irrelevancies about the past and piles of other people's prejudiced interpretations of the present? On that last point I concur; travellers rarely read travel books - unless they have to review them.

Reverting to this odd concept of an intellectual challenge: is the adaptability required of travellers sometimes mistaken for an intellectual feat? That seems unlikely because we're back to temperament: some people slot in easily everywhere. If travellers saw the need to adapt as an intellectual challenge they probably wouldn't slot in anywhere, except perhaps on some pretentious radio show.

Maybe the overcoming of language barriers is seen as an intellectual challenge? Yet there could scarcely be anything less intellectual than urgently saying "P-sssss!" when you must get fast to the nearest earth closet - or at least out of the tukul, which has been locked up for the night. The basic needs of human beings - sleeping, eating, drinking, peeing - are so basic that they can easily be understood; all our bladders function in exactly the same way. The language barrier unnecessarily inhibits many who otherwise would seek out and relish remote regions. On the practical level, it is of no consequence. I can state this with total assurance, having travelled on four continents using only English and those courtesy phrases of Tibetan, Amharic, Quechua or whatever that you happen to pick up as you go along. Even on the emotional level, it is not as formidable as it may seem; the human features - especially the eyes - are wonderfully eloquent. In our own society, the extent to which we wordlessly communicate goes unnoticed. In Far Flungery, where nobody within 200 miles speaks a syllable of any European language, one becomes very aware of the range of moods and subtle feelings that may be conveyed visually rather than aurally. However, on the exchange-of-ideas level the barrier is, quite simply, insuperable. Therefore scholar- travellers - people like Freya Stark, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Colin Thubron - consider the learning of Arabic or Albanian or Russian or Mandarin to be as essential as buying a map. And there you have what seems to me (linguistically inept as I am) a bona fide intellectual challenge.

As a label, 'the independent traveller' puzzles me. It verges on tautology; travellers, being inherently independent, don't need the adjective to distinguish them from those unfortunate victims of the tourist industry who, because of sun-starvation on our islands, are happy to be herded annually towards a hot spot where tea and chips are guaranteed and there is no danger of meeting the natives.

I can, however, see that holiday-makers (the category in between travellers and tourists) may validly be divided into 'dependent' and 'independent'. The former, though liking to make their own plans, contentedly follow beaten tracks and book their guesthouses in advance. The latter are often travellers manqué for whom unpredictability gives savour to their journey: setting off at dawn with no idea of where one will be by dusk, or who with or what eating. Only a lack of time or money prevents them from reaching travellers' territory and usually time is their problem. Travelling can be done on quite a short shoestring, and often must be so done for the excellent reason that the traveller's theatre of operations offers few consumer goods.

Independent holiday-makers are in general much more tolerant and sociable than travellers, whose escapist compulsion causes them to feel their day has been ruined if they glimpse just one other solitary trekker in the far distance, and who break out in spots if they come upon even a vestigial trace of tourism. But that last nightmare contingency is unlikely; the paths of travellers rarely converge, unless one finds oneself within a few miles of somewhere like Machu Picchu and it seems 'stupid not to see it'. Incidentally, Machu Picchu provided me with my most grisly travel memory - an American helicopter landing amid the ruins and spewing forth a squeal of excited women whose paunchy menfolk were intent only on photographing them beside the mournful resident llamas. My timing was wrong; you have to get to Machu Picchu at dawn, as I did later.

The past decade or so has seen the emergence of another, hybrid category: youngsters who spend a year or more wandering around the world in a holiday- making spirit, occasionally taking temporary jobs. Some gain enormously from this experience, but many seem to cover too much ground too quickly, sampling everywhere and becoming familiar with nowhere. They have been from Alaska to Adelaide, Berlin to Bali, Calcutta to Cusco, Lhasa to London. They tend to wander in couples or small packs, swapping yarns about the benefits - or otherwise - of staying here, doing that, buying this. They make a considerable impact on wherever they happen to perch for a week or so, often bringing with them standards (sometimes too low) and expectations (sometimes too high) that unsettle their local contemporaries.

Of course one rejoices that the young are free to roam as never before, yet such rapid 'round-the-worlding' is, for many, more confusing than enlightening. It would be good if this fashion soon changed, if the young became more discriminating, allowing themselves time to travel seriously in a limited area that they had chosen because of its particular appeal to them, as individuals.