Me and my travels

A Swiss Army knife. The new security rules mean I've almost had it confiscated on a couple of occasions, but I find it really useful. I also travel with a bottle of hot sauce. It was a trick I picked up from the US Army in Panama. The Latino troops all carried hot sauce with them to make the rations palatable. With hot sauce you can pretty much eat anything.

My top travel tip is...

Take twice as much money and half as many clothes as you think you'll need. I also think packing shorts is a really bad idea. Your legs get sunburnt, bitten and scratched - and most people look ridiculous in them.

When I'm travelling I miss...

Very British things: a good cup of tea and, depending where I am in the world, fresh vegetables. I have taken my own tea with me, but in Argentina, where I went for the first time last year, I drank the fantastic local herbal tea called yerba mate

My idea of paradise is...

The Rocky Mountains and the deserts of the American West. I particularly love Flaming Gorge in Utah, where you can camp in the desert on the red earth near a lake and get up really early and swim. There are ospreys nesting nearby and one morning I remember them taking fish from the lake around me as I swam.

My favourite hotel is...

The Burj al-Arab in Dubai. I haven't actually stayed there as it's incredibly expensive, but I have been there for drinks and it looks fantastic. I'm not really a big fan of hotels - I stay in so many for work that I much prefer staying with friends or even camping.

My most memorable meal was in...

South Dakota near the Bighorn, camping with my children when they were very young. We were surrounded by a buffalo herd and I cooked fresh steak on an open fire and drank ice-cold beer out in the open under this perfectly clear sky in which you could see every star. When I'm travelling I never play it safe with food - I'll always eat the local dishes. I particularly love eating with Arab friends in Muscat in Oman, sitting around on the floor and eating whatever is put in front of you.

My worst trip ever was to...

Texas in February 1993 to report on David Koresh and the Waco siege. I was having a weekend off hiking in the desert of Southern California and had to get a plane to this awful part of the world.

My most unusual plane journey was...

Flying 1,500 miles from Kodiak Island to the Aleutian Islands in a US military plane. The weather was clear and I spent hours watching this incredible landscape of tundra dotted with caribou herds. When we landed these Arctic Foxes came right up to the aircraft to scavenge for food. I bought a T-shirt at the US military base in Shemya with a slogan saying: 'Shemya: It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here!'

I'll never go back to....

Cuba under the current regime. I love the island, but I made a programme a few years ago in which I suggested that the top of the Communist Party in Cuba was complicit in drug smuggling. I'm not sure I can go back for a while. One of the most hellish places I've been was Dundee. I'm a Scot so I can say that! It wasn't the town itself but a hotel I stayed in. The rooms were dirty and they refused to serve me food after 7.30pm. When I asked where the bar was they informed me it was a temperance hotel!