It’s full tilt tumult out here in Jodhpur's Old City, a shock of human, animal and machinery tangled together in what looks like a monumental argument. The alleys leading away from the hotel are obviously too narrow for cars, this is my fragile conviction about to be upturned, because that’s exactly where we are headed. In a regular-sized car that just won’t fit. But it does. It’s all utterly impossible, like magical realism, and everyone coming in the opposite direction, fla

The ground roars and trembles, tipping the surging crowd down the narrow escalators. The train to Guangzhou rumbles into Hong Kong station. We obstinately hold our ground and move steadily towards our cabin. The uniformed woman gestures irritably. ‘Upstairs’, she says. I, personally, am anything but irritable. Upstairs. And facing forward. We’ve expressly requested that we face in the direction the train is going so China won’t go backwards. We sit down victorious and look ac

We tumble into room 2817 at the Intercontinental Foshan with dreams of room service and maybe even a bit of TV. We flop on the bed all easy going and delighted to have escaped the collective mayhem in the buffet dining room downstairs. I dial room service. Two ‘roast half chicken’ and one glass of white wine, please. Michel has a Tsingtao beer out the room fridge. You have no sauvignon blanc? The chardonnay is fine. Thank you. Missus Walter, you want one half chicken and one

And what it does to you. Altitude. The first leg I am between two grumpy men, a sort of filling in a belligerent sandwich. He on the right of me, who I do not know, is sighing and hissing: ‘Jesus Christ” long and drawn out like: Jeeeezus Chrrrrrist. While he on the left of me, who I do know, innocently drones on the phone, and is the cause of the meltdown on my right. Meanwhile the aircraft idles hotly on the Denver runway waiting, waiting for the air above San Francisco to m

Russell is a tiny, impossibly picturesque little place in the Bay of Islands, just north of Auckland, New Zealand. My mom is tiny too, although she’d say not, so I think I’ll take her there. A lovely drive, not too hairy, a couple of hairpin curves but I can inch along and we’ll savor the hectic, green, fernery dripping outside our windows and at the end, not too many hours of ravishing scenery later, we’ll be ON AN ISLAND. Well not exactly but you get there by ferry so it fe

There are two vastly different ways to buy a sari, probably more, but as foreigners in Singapore, there are two: In a posh store where the silk is diaphanous and the dollars several hundred; or at the covered market where the selection is vast and the prices less voracious. My daughter and I know exactly where we have to go. We take a short cab ride from our hotel in downtown and jump out at a recently rained on street corner dotted with steamed up bus shelters and general ma