SMALLER Son is in Outer Mongolia. I haven't heard from him for ten days. If not exactly worried, I am beginning to fret a little.

"Well," says his brother with an air of sweet reason, "I don't suppose there are many call boxes in the Gobi Desert." Which is a point.

The trouble is that these days we are so used to instant, constant communication. Thanks to mobiles, e-mails and, especially text messages, the boys might be usually out of sight but they are rarely out of touch. Whether it's a request for a lift, something from the supermarket, or the answer to a quiz question, they are used to being the click of a button away.

A bit different from the old days when you waved your son goodbye and heard nothing more until he turned up ten years later with a beard, a wife, five children and a hard luck story.

Now we expect - and get - a running commentary on their lives. So when he set out on this trip, we had a text message from Amsterdam airport, a phone call from the centre of Beijing. ("I had to spend £10 on a phone card and I've already used £2 of it," he said indignantly. We never heard from him again in Beijing so I can guess who had the other eight quid's worth but it wasn't me...)

And then a few days later, there I was, sitting in the car park at Stanhope when a text message came through, "Yo Mum, just on the train rolling into Mongolia..."

Gosh, and when I had my post A-Level adventure, I thought I was being daring going to London.

And I looked up at Stanhope Castle in the sunshine and people eating ice creams and thought how weird it was that my son was a world away and yet could communicate instantly, just like that.

Part of me thought this trip was never going to happen, which only goes to show how I underestimated the lad. But I think it was one of those schemes dreamed up on the back of a beer mat in the pub after football one night. In any case, he had A Levels to cope with first. And then his passport came back, with the wonderful visas - ornate and official from Russia and China and the one from Mongolia looking rather like a left luggage receipt.

Now you are either the sort of soul who thrills to the sight of an exotic visa or you're not. I am. Most definitely. I gazed enviously at them and the simple bits of paper had all the magic and romance of every travel book and adventure I had ever read, from Aladdin to James Bond and the story of Genghis Khan. An intriguing world of mysterious names and places, where even the alphabets are different.

And if I can't go, at least he can and he might tell me all about it. Perhaps. Some day. If he finds a phone box.

And with that, there came an e- mail. He's alive and well and in an internet cafe in Irkutsk. No, I didn't know where it was either, but apparently it's in Siberia and I think they have a football team that plays in the Siberian Premier League because he's been to a match.

That's the benefit of travel. You learn a lot. Even by proxy. Eventually.