Ian and I had had visions of ambling across the dunes on our camels like Lawrence of Arabia, wrapped in colourful scarves to protect us from the searing desert sun.
Unfortunately, we arrived in Urumqi, the capital of the Turkic region of Xinjiang in the far north-west of China, to freezing sleet, and had to [...]

London - British Airways apologised again on Sunday for the cancelled flights, passenger delays and lost baggage that have emerged from the chaotic opening of London Heathrow airport’s new Terminal 5.
“Since Thursday, when Terminal 5 opened, we have made clear that the service we have provided has not been good enough. We apologise sincerely to [...]

The traffic started to thin as we left clogged Cape Town behind us, and eventually the flat vineyards around Robertson yielded to geology as we headed through the filagree town of Montagu, nestled between slabs of crumpled rock. Then it was out towards the Nuy Valley, past sleepy farms with whitewashed buildings and strips of [...]

It could be said my roots were put down in the small southern Free State town of Bethulie, for it was there 100 years ago that my grandparents met and married. So it seemed the perfect occasion to visit it and try to visualise what life would have been like a century ago.
Bethulie, founded [...]

Tallinn - The mayors of Tallinn and Helsinki said on Friday they want to construct a railway tunnel under the Baltic Sea between their cities.
A statement from Tallinn city hall said Edgar Savisaar and his opposite number from Helsinki, Jussi Pajunen, had signed a deal on a feasibility study, allocating 100 000 euros each.
Savisaar told [...]

Terminal: that is the outlook for the building that proved the original concept for the modern airport. The revolutionary design of The Beehive, as Gatwick’s 1936 circular terminal soon became known, provided a sleek, beautiful interface between two forms of transport - rail and air.
For those unlucky enough to be reading this in one [...]

With Naples’ rubbish dumps declared full at the end of last year, household waste piled up in the streets, forcing the government to appoint a “trash tsar” to take control of a crisis blamed on years of weak governance and organised crime.
More than halfway through his 120-day mandate, former national police chief Gianni De Gennaro [...]

With its socialist doctrine of shared possessions - down to your underwear - and love of the land, the kibbutz for years symbolised Israel’s earthy Zionist ideals.
But Israelis abandoned the collective farms in droves as socialism fell from favour in the 1980s, urban centres flourished and many kibbutzim sank into debt as they struggled to [...]

Bamboo and thatch tourist huts hug the meandering Pai River as far as the eye can see, gobbling up rice paddies and clambering up hillsides on its left bank. On the right bank, high-priced resorts have begun to mushroom.
The short downtown strip is jammed with Apple Pai and nine other Internet cafes, video and [...]

It would have been fun to stay in a charming old cottage of another vintage, tucked away under equally venerable trees in the grounds of the Somerset East museum.
That’s the problem with arriving late, when the emphasis is on quickly finding somewhere to stay. So, not knowing about the cottage, we ensconced ourselves at Archer’s [...]