Health Hazards? I’ve been investigating the health risks of travelling in Central Asia, and here is my conclusion: I am definitely going to die. The opportunities in this region to be slain by any one of a million bugs, parasites, animals and people are generous by any standards. The bugs all have strangely effervescent names, and promise an array of  excruciating and frankly disgusting symptoms to carry me to my end. Many of these bugs, the web informs me, I am likely contract through an intimate exchange of bodily fluids with a stranger. (I had no idea that Central Asia would be so exciting.) As a result I have spent the afternoon composing my final words.  They will be delivered, I conceive, in the crisp mountain air, while the shadow of a mighty snow-capped peak slants across the grassy slopes towards us in the setting sun. They will be heard by a lusty maiden (if I'm lucky) or more probably by a wrinkly stranger with twinkly eyes and high Asiatic cheekbones. I couldn’t have imagined a more romantic way to meet my end if I had thought of it myself.