In the late '60s and early '70s, when it was still a colony run by distant Portugal, East Timor was an important stop along the "hippy trail", the overland route across Asia. For eastbound travellers from Europe it was the final stop, the last taste of Asia, before the short flight south to Darwin in Australia?s Northern Territory. For those flying west from Australia, it was a doorway into Asia, a short, sharp dose of culture shock as a brief aerial interlude zoomed you from the developed world to the developing one.

In 1972 my wife Maureen and I followed that long trans-Asian journey, a trip that led to the very first Lonely Planet guidebook, Across Asia on the Cheap. From London via Kathmandu to Singapore the route was straightforward, but after that things became more complex. Bailing out and flying the rest of the way to Australia was not an option; that would have been totally against the spirit of sticking to ground level. We left by sea, taking the legendary Pelni vessel Tampomas from the Indonesian island of Tanjung Pinang, just south of Singapore, to Jakarta.

Swapping tales with other travellers it was clear that island hopping from Bali to Timor and then flying across to Darwin was the cheapest way to go, but not the easiest.We trekked on down to Bali, contemplating having to island hop down to Kupang and, monsoon floods or not, make our way to Portuguese Timor the hard way. Instead we bumped into some New Zealanders with a yacht and ended up sailing straight to Exmouth, Western Australia. Timor was bypassed.

A year-and-a-half later in 1974 we finally did get there. This time we rode a motorcycle from Melbourne all the way to Darwin and airfreighted it across to Baucau. At the time, Portuguese Timor was already spiralling towards the chaos that would prevail for the next 25 years.When we arrived in Baucau on 23 May, this isolated and all but forgotten Portuguese colony was about to self-destruct.

My travels around East Timor to research Lonely Planet's new guidebook to East Timor, 30 years after my first visit, were dotted with magic moments. Sitting on the veranda of the flamboyant Pousada de Baucau sipping a sunset beer was one of them. Marvelling at the view from the headland at Tutuala was another, and so was the delight when our boat was surrounded first by dolphins and then by pilot whales on the way back to Dili from Atauro Island. The soon-after-dawn view from the top of Mt Ramelau was pretty special, and so was the festival I encountered on the steps of the colourful church at Ainaro. Already travellers were turning up. Meeting a young Australian who had chartered an outrigger canoe with an outboard motor to explore the coast east from Baucau was a reminder that if you want adventure it's always out there. Everywhere there was a feeling that this was a country that had seen tough times but was determined to move on.