I’m on every trip, but I also use local guides because they’re the keys to a foreign culture, and I choose them with care. They’re well versed in the history, culture and customs of the city or region and they’ll give you a deeper, richer understanding of a place and its culture.

Rajasthan, “land of kings”, is a rich and exotic part of India. Rich in ceremony, rich in tradition, rich in culture and colour. We’ll see leopards, painted elephants, princely palaces, tribal cultures, desert forts and dramatic landscapes.

Our tour of Bengal is a cracker of a journey with views of snow-capped Himalaya peaks from a tea plantation near Darjeeling, a cruise on the mighty Brahmaputra River, one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga National Park and the astonishing & life-changing Varanasi.

Ringed by rust-coloured ramparts, with the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas Mountains in the background, Morocco has always been a place of mystery and magic, where wild tribesmen coughed up from mountain villages once traded with exotic cameleers whose blue robes were still splattered with Saharan sand – a teasing place for the Western mind.