Garth George: Assignment Gallipoli - the pilgrimage of a lifetime

I'm sitting at my workstation doing my thing for the Herald and counting down the days to my retirement, when editor Tim Murphy arrives at my desk and says: "How would you like to go to Gallipoli for us this year?"

I haven't been rendered speechless that I can remember for at least 50 years, but right then I was struck dumb.

For it was only a week or so earlier, during the controversy over music for the Anzac Cove dawn service, that I had been reading letters from people who had been there and had thought: "That's one place in the world I'd like to see before I die."

As I stammered my acceptance, I was struck again by that old truism: "Be careful what you pray for - you just might get it."

From time to time in the past 15 years or so I have been temporarily nudged out of the comfort zone I have built around myself by things like moving house, deaths in the family and the other setbacks that crop up unexpectedly in life.

But this time I was blasted out of that security blanket and by the time I was ready to leave New Zealand on the adventure of a lifetime, I was feeling decidedly vulnerable.

But even had I known how physically punishing and mentally demanding this pilgrimage was going to be, I could never have turned down the opportunity to visit the hallowed ground that is the battlefields of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Like hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, the farthest I'd flown was the east coast of Australia. My only other journey abroad was to the United States in the late 1950s as a teenaged American Field Service Scholar, but that was a leisurely affair on the old P&O liner Oronsay.

In the 10 days to the end of the month, I visited four countries, Australia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, flew 36,000km and bussed hundreds more, spent 50 bum-numbing hours squashed into a big jet flying over such vast land masses as the Indian subcontinent and outback Australia, and gazed down from 35,000ft at a few hillocks in a sea of sand which were the pyramids of Egypt. I have blessed the inventor of nicotine patches.

I have crossed the Narrows of the Dardanelles a dozen times in a vehicular ferry and gazed at the forts on either side of the strait that have guarded that strategic waterway since time immemorial and which are now Turkish national monuments; and at the huge sign embedded in a hill on the Gallipoli side which, in Turkish, warns all wayfarers that they are entering a sacred place.

I have trod the shingle of the beaches at Anzac Cove, and the dust of the heights of Chunuk Bair remains ingrained in my boots. I don't think I'll ever polish them again.

I have travelled and observed and written for 42 hours on the trot with only an hour and a half's nap as the ceremonies of Anzac Day and the day before came one after the other kilometres apart; have longed for a replacement for my aching legs and burning feet, and have marvelled at the ease of communication compared with the days 30 years ago when I last did an out-of-office assignment for a newspaper.

The cellphone is indeed an incredible piece of equipment. Imagine having a real-time conversation with your wife by text message from half a world away as if you were just down the road from home.

And I have at last met Prime Minister Helen Clark personally at a reception complete with Prince Charles at a Canakkale hotel. She was obviously exhausted but cheerful and gracious when I introduced myself.

I have browsed the world-famous Gold Souk of Dubai where a thousand little shops sell a million golden trinkets and my favourite eau de cologne comes at less than a third of the price I pay here, and have wandered wide-eyed through the intricate alleys of the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul where you can buy literally anything you want and the price is always right.

I have stood under the vast domes of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, parts of which have been standing for more than 1000 years when it was first raised as a cathedral after Constantinople became the eastern capital of the Roman Empire. I have walked on streets that once felt the tramp of Roman and Ottoman legions on the march.

I have become a devotee of the Turkish national drink, the delicious apple tea, and have a plentiful supply of it and the delicate tulip-shaped glasses from which it is drunk.

And just when the work was done and the relaxation could begin, I have been stricken with a nasty virus which has me coughing and sneezing and sniffling and wheezing still, even as I write, and which took most of the pleasure out of the journey home.

I was an innocent abroad, the old man of the media party yet the tyro, surrounded by veterans of international assignments, some only half my age.

They, and a diminutive guardian angel disguised as an Army major, saw me through, bless them, albeit with a great deal of good-natured hilarity at my expense.

So now I'm off to climb back under my cosy security blanket. And I'll not leave it again unless I can fly business class.