I don’t like danger.

I really don’t.

It’s always me who’s telling Ariane and Timur to be careful when doing the simplest thing. And, as I fret about their safety, I sometimes find myself thinking about danger — and my preoccupation with it.

But, while I bounce around the world as I tend to do, I have at times found myself staring cold, raw danger squarely in the face.

On my travels there have been so many hair-raising trips in the back of clapped out buses and pick-ups in the Hindu Kush, or on zigzag pistes through central Africa, or Latin America. And, there were those 16 days spent in a Pakistani torture jail – a tightrope walk between life and death.

And, last week, I found myself in the danger zone once again.

I really thought it was the end.

‘Game Over’, as Timur would say.

I had flown up to Delhi to chat about a book I am writing to a close friend. I needed his input, and he gave me some excellent advice. It was 48 degrees in the Indian capital. Not a hint of breeze. Not a leaf stirring. I felt myself being cooked alive. After two days it was time to leave. I went to Delhi Airport to fly back down to Mumbai, where the kids and Rachana were waiting.

It was early afternoon and the airport was eerily dark.

There was a strange, almost primeval lack of light, as though nature was about to wreak a secret and unspeakable havoc. I boarded the flight and took a window seat quite near the front. After a short delay, the plane — an Airbus A320 — took off.

I noticed that we didn’t climb as fast as we might. And we weren’t going the usual speed.

All seemed well though.

But then, about 7 minutes into the flight — BANG! — the plane was thrown to one side. Then the other.

Then it fell.

Just like that.

And outside it became pitch black as night.

We had flown into the middle of a vast sandstorm, rolling in from the Great Thar Desert.

The engines filled with sand, and appeared to stall. The Airbus was buffeted around like a child’s toy. The Sikh salesman next to me kept yelling ‘Are we going to crash?!’ Straining to stay calm, I couldn’t bear to reply — but it seemed as though we were indeed all about to die.

Again and again the plane jarred and plunged, as the pilot fought desperately to get us through the sandstorm.

What struck me was how calm everyone was. In Europe I’m sure there would have been a lot more outward terror.

And there’s a detail that touched me.

It reminded me so vividly of the vile nights of interrogation in Pakistan, where I last experienced it.

When you are really scared — not a little fearful, but experiencing true terror — the smell of your sweat changes.

It suddenly smells like cat pee. Like ammonia.

And on that flight, that’s how it smelt. The whole plane stank of it, as the passengers — me included — sweated adrenalin.

After about ten minutes of jerking, falling, yawing about, I spied the faintest glimmer of light from the uppermost corner of the window.

I dared to breath in. Then out.

I focussed on that fragment of hope. Slowly, we approached it, as though every inch between us and it was part of a battle.

Eventually, the sandstorm passed. And thank God for that.

Later, I heard that it killed dozens in Delhi, as it tore through the shanties and the high rises. One woman who went up onto her roof to see what was going on, had her head cleaved clean off by a sheet of corrugated iron. And, at Delhi airport, a baggage handler was crushed to death by an avalanche of falling luggage.

As for me, I landed in Mumbai a little wiser than when I had taken off.

Danger is my nemesis, but it’s an educator like none other.

That is, if you allow yourself to learn from its deadly hands.