Leon McCarron - my expedition partner and cameraman on this 5,000-kilometre trek home, which began in Mongolia about two months ago - is a softly spoken, tall, lanky, Northern Irishman in his mid-20s.
When we set off, Leon and I did not know each other very well. He films adventures for a living and we had met briefly in London and New York to discuss a cycling expedition he was planning.
Then about a year ago my wife and I invited him to stay with us when he arrived, on his bicycle, in Hong Kong.
It so happened that I was in the early stages of planning this Walking Home From Mongolia adventure when my previous expedition partner pulled out for family reasons two days before Leon arrived. And so, a few days later, after getting to know Leon a bit better and gaining respect for both his camerawork and adventuring ability, I invited him to join me on the trek.
Any serious adventurer will now perhaps remark that asking someone I barely knew to come on a long, gruelling and risky journey was a rash thing to do. Indeed, many an expedition has come undone owing to team members falling out, even when they are old friends. By the time Peter Hillary and Graeme Dingle finished walking the length of the Himalayas in 1981, they were almost unable to speak to each other. On his 860-day walk across the Amazon, Ed Stafford's expedition partner left him after just three months. The list goes on.
British adventurer Ranulph Fiennes has said how rare it has been for him to find reliable teammates, and has a general rule of 'never selecting Yorkshiremen for my teams, because they are dour and nurse grievances; small men, because they need to work hard to make themselves seen and heard; and spectacled men because, when their spectacles break, they may become pains in the neck'.
I guess big bust-ups should be expected in an environment that combines the big egos and ambitions of adventurers with severe conditions, regular dangers, complex logistical decisions and tricky deadlines.