Dear Time-Reader: A veteran correspondent is one of the world's most experienced travelers. He is a connoisseur of the best and most comfortable ways of traveling. He is also a calloused graduate of some of the most rugged and unusual means of transport. Take just a few recent experiences of TIME correspondents:

In the Portuguese territory of Goa. Correspondent Alexander Campbell had his first ride in a solid brass bus. It was a 25-year-old veteran of the days when they used brass instead of steel. Wrote Campbell: "The bus glittered a bright butter-yellow, was supposed to take only 28 passengers on the 45-mile trip to the Goan capital of Panjim. We took on 39 passengers plus several goats. The trip took three hours and I was too jammed to move body or limbs. I cannot recommend brass buses as a cure for dysentery, but it did teach this sufferer self-control."

In these days when the arctic is also a news beat, our correspondents in Canada have experienced a good deal of the rigors of travel in the northern regions. For TIME'S Ottawa Correspondent Byron Riggan it was a firsthand test of the machine against the elements. He was covering the Canadian army maneuvers out of Fort Churchill when the snowmobile in which he was riding got lost in the featureless terrain of the northern barrens. Next, the communications radio conked out, and finally the gasoline froze and the motor died. Fortunately, the passengers in the stranded vehicle were sighted by another snowmobile and brought back to camp before nightfall.

One TIME correspondent who resorted to animal transport is Robert Lubar. He left from Mexico City to cover the story of an archaeological find in the interior of the state of Tamaulipas. He traveled first by plane, then by jeep, and finally by hired mule."I never believed," said Lubar later, "that I would ride seven hours on muleback to get a story."

Although plane travel is usually routine, it is not always first-class. During the Indo-Chinese war, Correspondent John Mecklin recalls flying from Hanoi to Namdinh in the only available craft: a prewar Messerschmitt trainer. "Half the instruments were out of commission, and the French noncom pilot sat puffing a big cigar in casual defiance of a 'no smoking' sign. "When I mentioned this," says Mecklin, "the pilot merely said, 'Don't worry, the engines are usually smoking, too.'"

When the old World War II Junkers transport in which Correspondent William McHale was a passenger landed in Gafsa after a 200-mile flight over Tunisia, he overheard this conversation between a fellow passenger and the pilot: "Excuses-moi, Monsieur," said the passenger. "It was a magnificent flight. But, is not this an ancient airplane? When are you going to retire it from service?" Said the pilot with a thin Gallic smile: "Ah, my friend, this animal here she has already been condemned. We're junking her next week."

Sometimes modern transport turns up in the most unlikely places, as Dwight Martin discovered last month. He was on the shore of Lake Toba, in north central Sumatra, visiting Battakland. To navigate the lake to the island of Samosir, where he wanted to see some of the Battak villages. Martin had bargained for the usual local transportation: a boatman with a Battak war canoe.

The boatman eventually arrived, Martin reported, but without a canoe. The native announced that his name was Zacharias. He wore a U.S. Army fatigue cap and his boat was a snappy, white-trimmed craft powered by a brand-new, sky-blue, American-made Evinrude outboard motor.

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