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Eco-traveller: Dominica, Eastern Caribbean
Virgin Caribbean – really. No glitzy hotels, no sunlounger-pocked beaches – just big old hills, craters, and more birdlife than you could poke a stick at in what is apparently the only surviving ocean rainforest in the world. You won’t go here to loll and burn, you go to climb, to dive, and to get eco-lushed-up big time on this Eastern Caribbean island. This is deep down local color Dominican-style rather than the pan-island Jamaican imported variety that floods so much of the Caribbean.

To stay
Anchorage Hotel and Dive Centre, Castle Comfort, south of the island. $50-£80 a night. So right on the water that you walk out of bed and into the sea. Very functional and great diving set-up.

Habitation Chabert – Marigot. $60-£150 a night. A slightly crumbly 17th-century fort house set in a luscious garden that has five rooms. Can be taken a room at a time, or altogether.

Calibishie Lodges, Calibishie. $70-$120 a night. Between the sea and the villages, the lodges for four are set in a garden with a pool.

Must do
The champagne dive: scuba dive or snorkel through the seabed’s own bubble machine.
Take a picnic, loads of water, and trek to the rim of a volcano through Desolation Valley.

The new aerial tram takes you over the canopy of the rainforest without even have to unpack your hiking boots.

Sit on the sea wall in Roseau and watch for the green flash just as the top of the sun dips over the horizon. Don’t blink, it’s that quick.

Cultural Adventurer: Marrakech, Morocco
Midnight in Marrakech: central square, a dense crowd dancing to the drumbeats of Arabia and Africa amongst mounds of snails, boiled sheep heads and spicy sausages of every shape and size. It’s fantasyland where the madness of Africa’s darkest night meets the art and design of the Moors. This is why Marrakech intoxicates with its ancient theatre of life and modern culture buzz. Wind through the labyrinth of the old city during the day and dance with the whirling dervishes by night.

To stay
Marrakech’s latest white-hot must do has been the rise of the riad, the town houses of the labyrinthine old city, the medina. They vary from bedrooms you can’t swing a kitten in to sublime palatial set-ups. Shopping around for the right riad can be as fun or as fraught with disaster as going to the souk. The good ones are expensive but worth the splash.

Right riad – Riad Kasbah Le Mirage, Ouahat Sidi Brahim. From $95 a night for bed and breakfast. This gorgeous riad is about 4km out of the city, and looks out towards the snowy peaks of the High Atlas—worth every dollar.
Hôtel dc Foucauld, Avenue El Mouahidine. $50 upwards, depending on season. Some might find the Moorish interior faded but the manageress, Maria, is charm personified.
The Grand Hôtel Tazi, Avenue Houmman el Fetouaki, less than $50 a night. At the southern end of the medina, this comfortable hotel has a pool, a big bonus in the summer burn up.

Must do
Hit the central square, Jemaa el Fna, at night, dance, eat, melt, but mind your bag.
Buy a belly-dancing outfit in the souk, but bargain hard in this full throttle Aladdin’s cave.
Head for the hills for a day on a day trek in the Atlas Mountains beyond the city.
Starve for a day in preparation, book at table at Dar Yacout in the medina, and fall into the opulence of Moroccan eating by reflected candlelight.
Soul Searcher: The Tibetan Borderlands, North India
Amazing what happens to body and soul up on the roof of the world. Make your way up into the High Himalayas on trek, by local bus or jeep, and enter a place where the Tibetan culture has been preserved beyond the reach of the Chinese. The Spiti Valley is stripped bare by nature, a Buddhist cupping bowl of monasteries, medieval subsistence farming methods and nomadic herders, a place where the land just seems to turn into the sky.

To stay
The valley only re-opened to the outside world a few years ago so hotels are fairly thin on the ground. The places to stay are either guesthouses run by local families, or in the guesthouses that are joined to some of the monasteries and run by the sisters, cousins and aunts of the monks. The best bet is just to ask around when you get into each small town.

For trekking contact Paddy Singh at hindoostantours@hotmail.com Tel: + 44 79315 05836. Average cost between $80-$100 a day for very comfortable trekking with guides and porters.

For jeep safaris contact Sita World Travel in New York Tel: 212 759 8979, with trips starting from $30 a day.

Must do
Get up onto the roof of the world, they don’t get bigger than the High Himalayas, and all the rest of life just seems to fall into place around you.
Walk with nomadic yak herders for a day or two and find yourself living by a rhythm of life set by dawn and dusk.
Hang out in a Tibetan gompa, monastery, and sit in on the over-powering drum-banging and conch shell-blowing prayer ceremonies.
Find the real sound of silence in one of the few remaining places in the world that is hard enough to reach to have remained pristine…for now.
Road Tripper: Paris to Cannes, France
Wipe out all thought of road tripping neon-lit motel life; France’s highway system might as well have been laid down in the 18th century just to fit alongside some of the prettiest grand country houses and estates. Take three days from Paris to the south, turn off almost anywhere on the national highways, and you almost can’t help bumping into some juicy little country inn, or chateau where the local duke or duchess just had to open up the gilded gates to the paying public to keep the tax wolf from the door. Beware – French highways are not all freeways – the big ones are péage, pay as you go.

To stay
Right in the thick of Paris is Hotel du Quai Voltaire, 19 Quai Voltaire, 19th Arrondisement. From $102 a night. A former abbey that became a hotel much loved by great artists and writers, right in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Along the way, off Route National 74, La Berchere, Boncourt-le-Bois, Nuits-St-Georges, Burgundy. From $75 a night. About as classic a country chateau as they come with 15th,17th and 18th-century details on call, hard to believe you’re not in a French movie.
Down south, off Route National 96 – Auberge Charembeau, Route de Niozelles, Fourcalquier. From $70 a night. An 18th-century farmhouse looking out towards the Luberon hills with spectacular cycling all around (bikes provided).

Must do
Adopt the French style of three good meals a day, no skimping on croissants, cheese or wine. Stop for long lunches. Be French, see how sleek they stay.
Go and see some of the best art in the world at Musée D’Orsay in Paris, take in the post-impressionist artists because you’ll be driving right through the countryside they painted.
Pull up in a village at twilight, watch them playing boule in the village square. They do wear berets, really.
Walk through lavender fields in Provence, close your eyes, breathe in.

Party Seeker: Downtown NYC
Chelsea has been cranking it up for a while now as Gotham’s dance club central but true downtown, below 14th Street, is still the core of cool NYC. That said, places like Soho, Noho and the Meatpacking District are getting seriously expensive to live and eat in. The Park Avenue princesses now swing their dolly-sized purses between 9th and the river, where it was once just cow carcasses lurching about. Some might say that most of downtown is now getting more uptown than anything within spitting distance of Central Park.

To sleep – perhaps…
Very little in NYC is cheap, unless it's free like the parks and libraries, and that is especially true of accommodation.

|Right in thick of downtown, St Mark's Hotel, 2 St Mark’s Place. $90-100 a night. TelAt the gateway to the East Village, this was once a "hot sheets hotel" favored by sex workers and their clients. It’s had a facelift and change of clientele since then—they say.
White House Hotel of New York, 340 Bowery. $50 a night. A hostel that’s popular with European travellers who want to check in where NYC’s punk scene checked out at CBGBs, as well as being neatly on the doorstep of the Lower East side and Soho.
Larchmont Hotel, 27 W.11th Street. $100-130. Perfect if the West Village’s almost Parisian neighborhood is you, with its celebrity-housing brownstones, sometimes over-hyped restaurants and clubs, and a load more comfortable than the benches in Washington Square.

Must do
If you can’t make it to India to learn a real headstand, at least you can walk over to the low-400s on Layfayette Street and get the NYC upside-down treatment, disco or crunch style.
Okay, so shopping has taken over from art in Soho, but so what, it’s the chicest souk you’ll ever get to, and, when you’re done you can fall into one of the many gallery parties that are just bound to be on.
Go and pick at some tiny thing at one of the fancy new downtown eateries with big prices and and weeny-butted NYC movie stars on parade, then get real food round the corner at The Cozy Soup and Burger at 739 Broadway.
Tango at 827 Broadway, at La Belle Epoque, the beautiful era, both by name and nature, sexy old-world look and red hot teachers.

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