I spent two years travelling the world, backpacking across Australia’s vast red flatlands to Darwin, then on to Bali and overland ultimately to Europe. I travelled solo, discovering many intriguing, wonderful places—Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal—that I would return to in later years. In Greece, I was hospitalised with a hepatitis fever so debilitating that it took me three weeks to recognise the Acropolis through the window across the bay. For days, I just lay there on a drip, utterly debilitated. I felt like my battery pack had been removed. Slowly, after several weeks, I started to rebuild my strength humming along to Gloria Gaynor’s hit of that time, ‘I will Survive’.7 First, I could only shuffle down the corridor clutching the rail, next very slowly up some stairs. Then I tottered outside to discover the hospital’s vegetable garden, where I sat thawing under the shy spring sunlight. One day, I heard a commotion from the chapel nearby which was celebrating the orthodox Easter mass. I was greeted at the door and felt warmly welcomed. It was a beautiful service, and the space was filled with a quiet serenity. After some minutes sitting in the congregation, I noticed that the priest was missing an ear. Oddly, then, the verger had only a part of his hand. Slowly, very slowly, I turned to find myself amid others, disfigured but smiling, all around me. I was in the leprosarium. Luckily, it is very rare to catch leprosy from casual physical contact.