This was our fifth Roman Roads trip together. On the summit of Nemrut Dağı we thought we had climbed to the end of our Roman Roads journeys. But here we were, doing what we had agreed never to do, which was to travel in southeastern Turkey in the winter, and to travel during Ramazan. Our intended route, zigzagging across the Taurus Mountains and then hugging the Syrian frontier until we met the Euphrates river, would be empty of tourists. I was affecting some knowledge of the region, but this was based on a pair of journeys undertaken 35 years ago.

We were a pair of tough, independent male travellers – one of us honed by 70 years of battlefield experience as England’s most famous war correspondent, the other by 40 years of pottering around North Africa, picnicking among historical monuments. Because of this collective travel experience, we insisted that we needed to be met at the airport by a friendly female face. It was a good call, for although we had already landed at Istanbul and were now part of a jolly domestic scrum on an internal flight, our baggage had to be retrieved from international arrivals. A high state of security was in operation. We later found out there was a good reason for this, but in the meantime our trail of travel documents needed retrieving in the right order. This was proving difficult: I had come from a three-day book festival, and Sir Donald McCullin from the Swahili coast. We were tired, it was Ramazan and it was the middle of the night. It is at moments like this that everyone needs Monica Fritz to pop up in their lives. Frowns get transmuted into smiles. Don was placed in command of our camera boxes, while Monica continued to charm the security guards (chatting to them about their mothers’ favourite iftar soup recipes) while I was nonchalantly pushed through a side door. The vast luggage hall was empty apart from two floodlit suitcases that were about to be carted off to the lost-luggage office.