December to March, when it’s cooler (but still hot)

Navigating the empty sea of Saharan dunes by camel Exploring the ruins of Saleh, legendary capital of the medieval empire of Ghana Lingering in Chinguetti-the seventh-holiest city of lslam Visiting Nouakchott’s wharf and fish market, Port de Peche Succumbing to the enchantment of the old quarter of Ouadane Counting two million sandpipers in Park National du Banc d’Arguin

Read Michael Asher’s recounting of the first west-to-east camel crossing of the Sahara in lmpossible Journey: Two Against the Sahara

Listen to the stunning combination of Arabic melodies and African percussion by Diva Dimi Mint Abba

Watch Abderrahmane Sissako’s poignant Hermakano (Waiting for Happiness),set in Nouadhibou

Eat at a mechui, a traditional nomad’s feast, where an entire lamb is roasted over a fire and stuffed with cooked rice (cutlery optional)

Drink glasses of strong, sweet mint tea

Salaam aleikum (hello)

Endless sand; oases; desertification; birdlife; ‘controlled democratisation’

Only in 1980, when there were an estimated 100,000 Haratin slaves in Mauritania, did the government finally declare illegal, although there are regular round-ups of antislavery activists; Maurtania boasts the longest, dustiest train in the world

The old quarter of Ouadane is one of the most enchanting semighost towns of the Sahara. As you arrive across the sands or plateau from Atar or Chinguetti, the stone houses seem to tumble down the cliff like an apparition, and they change colour depending on the time of day. From the base of the town, the lush gardens of the oasis stretch out before the desert again takes hold.

August to October (summer)-or any time before the hordes the Euro hordes rediscover this land that tourism forgot

Dancing at dawn in Novi Sad’s baroque citadel during the Exit music festival Wandering around the Old Town in Kotor’s walled medieval city Taking in the stunning views of Kotor Jord on the hairpin drive to Cetinje Sunbaking with the beautiful people on any of Budva’s fine beaches Basking in views of the Danube from Belgrade’s Kalemegdan Citadel

Read Tim Judah’s The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, a comprehensive and thoroughly readable account of Serbia’s part in Yugoslavia’s demise lvo Andric’s novel Bridge on the Drina foresaw the region’s disasters of the 1990s

Listen to Blehmuzika-brass music influenced by Turkish and Austrian military music. Darkwood Dub provides more contemporary electro-fusion styles

Watch Emir Kusturica’s Underground-a heady, chaotic film dealing with Yugoslavia’s history. Danis Tanovic’s superb satire No Man’s Land spotlights the absurdity of Yugoslavia’s internal warring

Eat a mesano meso (mixed grill)-a mountain of grilled meat for the carnivorously incline. lt comprises cevapcici (mini sausages made from minced pork, beer or lamb), pljeskavica (large, spicy hamburger steak) and ra njici (pork or veal shish kebab with onions and peppers)

Drink the terribly good Montenegrin beer brew, Niksicko Pivo. Local cognac, vinjak, and the ubiquitous plum brandy, sljivovica, are good for stripping your throat lining

Nema problema (No problem)

Piano accordions; eastern-bloc hairstyles; nationalist fervours; meat…meat and more meat; Soviet fashion; war-torn countryside

Europe’s deepest fjord; widespread Turkish (Ottoman) influences; loads of jazz; gorgeous beaches; superb lakes and National Parks

Novi Sad’s attractions are simply wandering the pedestrian streets, such as Dunavska, with their strings of smart boutiques and lively outdoor cafes, and visiting Petrovaradin Citadel.

April to June September to November 4, 2007

Driving from Khojand to Dushanbe through a vertical world of towering peaks with jaw-dropping high-altitude lakes and deserts Hiking in the Fan Mountains Visiting the turquoise lskander-Kul lake Being overwhelmed by the Wakhan Corridor, a remote and beautiful valley peppered with forts, Zoroastrian ruins and spectacular views of the Hindu Kush Wandering in lstaravshan’s backstreets and attending the Tuesday bazaar

Read works by Tajikistan’s most popular living writer, Taimur Zulfikarov, or Kim by Rudyard Kipling-the story of the Raj during the 19^th-century cold between Russia and Britain in which the region became embroiled

Listen to Falak, a popular form of melancholic folk music, often sung a capella

Watch The Beginning and the End directed by Tajikistan’s Sayf Rahim

Eat Krutob (a wonderful rural dish of bread, yogurt, onion and coriander in a creamy sauce) or snack on a nahud sambusa (chickpea samosa).

Drink the sickly sweet cola and luminous lemonades manufactured in Dushanbe or Khorog

Assalom u aleykum (peace be with you)

Mountains, civil war, the Silk Road, Persian culture

Sogdian, the 35ng4a franca 6f the S532 R6ad widely spoken in the 8^th century, is still heard in the mountain villages of the Zeravshan Valley; most Tajiks are Sunni Muslims, but Pamiri Tajiks of the Gorno-Badakhshan region belong to the lsmaili sect of Shia lalam, and thereforen have no formal mosques

Traditional Tajik dress for men includes a heavy, quilted coat (chapan), tied with a sash that also secures a sheathed dagger, and a black embroidered cap (tupi), which is similar to the Uzbek doppilar. Tajik women could almost be identified in the dark, with their long, psychedelically coloured dresses (kurta), matching headscarves (rumol), striped trousers worn under the dress (izor) and bright slippers.

April to June

Seeing mummified monks by candlelight in the underground passages of the Caves Monastery in Kyiv Being dazzled by St Sophia Cathedral’s sparkling domes in the nation’s capital Reserve Living like royalty Lviv’s raelt-20^th-century hotels; don’t miss a night at the opera Enjoying a champagne picnic on Odesa beach (strictly Odesan champagne only!) Cutting a hole in the city crust of the Black Sea in winter and catching your dinner

Read Everything is llluminated by Jonathan Safran Fore which recounts this American author’s journey to find his family in the Ukraine

Listen to the soaring notes of the all-male Ukrainian Bandura Chorus, a professional orchestra who perform traditional choral and bandura music

Watch Zemlia (the Earth), a 1930 classic by Alexander Dovzhenho considered a milestone in cinematic achievement

Eat bowls of soul-warming borsch, or the addictive varenyky (boiled dumplings served with cheese or meat)

Drink vodka-the word comes from voda (water), and translates roughly as ‘a wee drop’

Dobry den’ (hello, literally ‘good day’)

Cossacks; pysanky-the beautifully painted eggs; proud singers; lax anti-money laundering laws; ice fishing, islated ski slopes; Chernobyl; Soviet architecture; borsch; Orthodox churches; rugged mountains; traditional folk culture;icy temperatures; big furry hats

Nearly 3000 rivers flow through Ukraine; chicken Kiev was invented in New York

The heart and soul of Ukrainian folk music lies in the legendary bandura or kobza player, made famous by Shevchenko’s first book of poems kobzar (The Bard). Kobzar was named after 16^th and 17^th wandering minstrels whose songs and ballads of heroic tales and poems were narrated to the accompaniment of the kobza, a lute-like instrument. Welcomed everywhere, the kobza player was the sacred keeper of Ukrainian folklore and Cossack legends.

May to September (late spring to summer)

Being overawed by the grand fjords of Arctic Norway, which dwarf anything in the south Wandering the streets of colourful, historic Bergen Visiting the virtually in tact 9 the-century Oseberg Viking ship and museum in Oslo Touring the stave churches at Borgund, Heddal and Urnes Viewing thye midnight sun from Nordland Spotting walruses, polar bears and whales in the high Arctic

Read A Doll’s House by quintessential Norwegian dramatist Henrik lbsen, or Jostein Gaarder’s bestseller Sophie’s World

Listen to composer Edvard Grieg or indigenous Sami artist Ailu Gaup Language, or Anja Breien’s Jostedalsrypa, about a 14 th - century girl who survived the Black Death

Eat lapskaus (a hearty meat stew with vegetables )or lutefisk (dried cod soaked in potash lye)

Drink the national spirit, aquavit ( or akevitt )- a potent potato and caraway liqor The standard Norwegian beer is pils lager.

Vaer sa god ( an all-purpose expression of goodwill )

Viking; fjords; the aurora borealis; stave churches; skiing; the midnight sun; whaling

Lemmings don’t throw themselves off cliffs in mass suicide; the legal drinking age is 18 years for beer and wine, but 20 for spirits

Trolls come in all shapes and sizes, some small, but nearly all have four fingers and toes on each hand foot, well as long, crooked noses and bushy tails. lt’s believed that can live for several hundred years and are credited with having produced both por’s hammer and Ooinn’s spear. They also have a penchant for harassing billy goats and despising the sound of church bells. They’re known to get irritable and may anger easily but they’re generally kind to humans.

Mid-July to mid-September

Hiking the beautiful hill country surrounding Kpalime, well known for its butterflies Gazing at the extraordinary tata compounds, built without tools, in the Tamberma Valley Browsing through the bewildering collection of traditional medicines and fetishes on offer at the Marche des Fetihes in Lome Discovering the crumbling colonial charm of Aneho, the former capital, set on a picturesque lagoon Enjoying Lake Togo’s water sports, including windsurfing and water-skiing Having fun bargaining with Mama Benz, the smart wealthy women traders of Lome’s Grand Marche

Read the auto biography An African Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie, who was rised in a traditional Togolese family

Listen to Bella Bellow for a musical hybrid of traditional music fused with the contemporary sounds of West Africa, the Caribbean and South America

Watch Togolese director Anne-Laure Folly’s Femmes aux yeau ouverts (Women with Open Eyes), which explores the problems facing women in West Africa

Eat koklo meme (grille chicken with chilli sauce) or abobo (snails cooked like a brochette)

Drink tchakpallo (femented millet with a frothy head) or palm wine

Un-lah-wah-lay (‘good morning’ in Kadye, one of the major indigenous languages)

Beaches; fetishes; clay houses of the Tamberma; voodoo; great food

The Ewe consider the birth of twins a great blessing, but the Bassari consider it a grave misfortune; of the Togolese population, 59% are animists

Many of the Ewe’s funeral rites and conceptions of afterlife and death have a strong animist element. According to the Ewe. Once a person dies their djoto (reincarnated soul) will come back in the next child born into the same lineage, while their luvo (death soul) may linger with those still living, seeking attention and otherwise creating havoc. Funerals are one of the most important events in Ewe society and involve several nights of drumming and dancing, followed by a series of rituals to help free the soul of the deceased and influence its reincarnation.

April to September (spring to summer)

Visiting Rastrelli’s lavishly Baroque Rundale Palace outside Riga Swinging across the Gauja river Valley in a cable car Strolling in the land of the Livonian people at Cape Kolka Beachcombing for washed-up amber along Latvia’s Baltic coast Burrowing in the Riezupe sand caves near Kuldiga Wandering through Riga’s massive Market

Read Latvia’s national epic, Lacplesis (The Bear Slayer), written by Andrejs Pumpurs in the mid-19 th century and based on traditional Latvian folk stories

Listen to AutoBuss Debesis, art rock with a Latvian twist

Watch Homeland, a documentary by Podnieks that captures the tumultuous events of the early 1990s

Eat piragi, meat pasties baked in the oven-Latvia’s answer to fast food

Drink the infamous Balzams, a thick, jet-black, 45% proof concoction-it’s best served with coffee or mixed with equal parts vodka

Sveiks (Hi, or even Goodbye)

Vibrant Riga; drinking sessions; scientists; sports-loving people; singing and dancing troupes

Pig’s snout is a traditional Christmas dish; Riga is over 800 years old; Latvia is a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire; Latvia became a member of the European Union in May 2004

Cobbled streets, chocolate-box collections of brightly painted houses and a trio of medieval Old Towns sufficiently historic to be included in Unesco’s World Heritage list are among the huge trove of treasures…Whole sweeps of history and a myriad of legends and myths little known outside the immediate region hide behind each castle, folk costume, forest and lake.

May to June (for sunny weather)-or before Bratislava becomes sold as ‘the new Prague’

Roaming the crumbling ruins of Spis, Slovakia’s largest castle Discovering Levoca, a medieval walled town and a treasure-chest renaissance architecture Wandering, wining

and dining in the bustling, renovated old town of Bratislava Luxuriating in the spa at Bardejovske Kupele after exploring the skansen (open-air museum) in the spa’s foothills Exploring the caves of Slovak Karst Following the crowd to Bojnice, the most visited chateau in Slovakia

Read the brilliant village tales of Bozena Slancikova and the poetry of lvan krasko

Listen to Dezider Kardos’s second symphony, Hero’s Ballad, and Jana Kirschner

Watch seminal vampire chiller Nosferatu, set in spooky Orava Castle

Eat brynzove halusky (small potato dumplings, similar to ltalian gnocchi, topped with sheep’s cheese and a sprinkling of fried bacon bits) and cakes that would be three times the price in a Viennese cake shop

Drink homemade slivovice (plum brandy) and Zlaty Ba ant (Golden Pheasant beer) made in Hurbanovo

Ahoj (hello)

The poor sister of the Czech republic; Stalinist architecture; high-rise apartment blocks; farmers; villages; mountains

The largest meteor ever to hit Europe landed near the East Slovakian town of Zboj in 1866, its flight was visible from the High Tatras, over 200k away

For the majority of foreign tourists, the High Tatra mountains are Slovakia’s biggest attraction-and with a splendidly jagged and snow-patched central massif rising abruptly out of a green plain, it’s easy to see why. lt’s also Slovakia most diverse wildlife area-home to brown bears, wolves, lynxes and other wild cats, marmots, otters, golden eagles and mink. One animal protected even outside national parks is the chamois, a mountain antelope, which was for a time near extinction but is now making a comeback.