Some 20 years later, Jacob, now the Travel, Food and Drink Editor of the Financial Times, London, sits comfortably in the lounge of the India International Centre, holding forth on journeys in general and his new book, a compilation of travel articles published in the newspaper, in particular. “ I think I’m more of a foreign correspondent than a travel writer,” says Jacob, who has chronicled his adventures and observations, while jet-setting from Santa Fe to Male, from Shanghai to Saigon, while stumbling into Joan Didion and lunching with Vikram Seth and Yann Martel.

In today’s age of easy travel, Jacob says it isn’t enough to be a tourist and write about a place, that travel writing cannot limit itself to being “postcards of perfect sunsets”. “Most of my readers travel the way I do, on the job. Apart from speaking of the over-all experience, I pick up one aspect of the place, one that I am drawn to and write about it,” he says. So he wrote about the opera in Santa Fe, about all-night concerts in Dakar and the madness of Manhattan. “I report it like a story,” says Jacob, who makes sure the personal is in touch with the political.