Travel

"You have a big mountain to climb!" is not the sort of text you eagerly await from your girlfriend’s father. But Billy, a true Southern gent, meant no ambiguity. As dawn cracked the alarms sounded in our Airbnb and six of us bundled into the back of the Dodge. A cool mist hung in the valley as “Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland)” started up on the radio and got the blood running. At 6:15 a.m. we entered the shadow of Emigrant Peak, which at 10,921 feet, commands Montana’s Paradise Valley. Emigrant owes its name to Thomas Curry, a pioneer who struck gold in a creek on the east side of the mountain in 1863.

Nozawa Onsen and Hakuba, my favorite ski resorts near Tokyo, are booking up fast. A trip to Japan guarantees novelty, not least if you book a ski trip. Underpinned by excellent food, surreal views, reliable snow cover, fantastically cheap prices and delightful onsen culture, it’s no wonder the country is increasingly popular with gaijin (non-Japanese). Australian, American and European powder hounds now fill the towns every year, but there are endless authentic experiences waiting in each charmingly idiosyncratic resort. A quick Google betrays that my favorites are already filling up for winter ’24/25. So here’s a run-down of what to expect, and where I’d recommend you book, subayaku.

There’s more to Morjim than offshore gambling and trance parties “North Goa or South Goa?” Ahead of a last-minute January trip, I found myself pestering every friend and acquaintance I could recall having traveled near or by West India, in between consulting YouTube, Instagram, articles and forums.  Advice was echoed across the board. “Head south to relax, and north if you want to go home miserable, with impaired hearing.”  As much as trance music is distinctly Not My Thing, I still wanted to see its birthplace. North Goa is one of those storied, almost ethereal places intrinsically linked to a time before traveling was inextricable from viral Instagram videos and well-worn guidebook recommendations.

With my Customs Declaration Form in hand and Japanese customs handbook in my pocket, I touched down in Tokyo for the first time, from Mumbai. I was wearing flip flops in February, but feeling as ready as I ever would. “Don’t point your chopsticks.” “Never raise your voice.” “No talking on public transport.” “Try to arrive early.” “Take your garbage home with you.” “Meetings should not be canceled.” “Make sure you slurp your noodles.” “Jaywalking is punishable with up to three months in prison.” There was a lot to remember. I was determined not to follow the trodden path, to find spots nobody else had. Then I got off the train in central Tokyo.

When I visited New York for the first time in a decade recently, one of its most famous living writers, Paul Auster, died on the day I arrived. This was not, I hope, anything to do with my presence in the city he spent decades memorializing; he had been suffering from terminal cancer for a considerable time. Yet as I sat at my desk at the first hotel I was visiting, the Frederick in Tribeca — a comfortable and well-located spot, let down slightly by its surly and unhelpful staff, but redeemed by stylish touches like a tiled map of nineteenth-century Manhattan built into the well-appointed shower — and started to write a tribute to Auster for our website, it made me wonder what, exactly, I was trying to find out about literary New York. Was I exploring its distinguished past?

Strong, old pine tree branches cutting through a cloudless cerulean sky — a sight I find hard to beat. Throwing open the curtains at Pine Cliffs Resort in the Algarve, I wondered why I’d been away from Portugal so long.  Bleary-eyed, I reflexively photographed my first glimpse of the Atlantic from my Junior Ocean Suite’s balcony, seagulls cinematically swooping into the frame. Another vain attempt to capture the colors that always keep me coming back; the pictures somehow never as good as the real thing. I’d posted up from Tokyo gone dinnertime the previous night, just outfoxed by Japan’s famed pink sakura (2024’s late bloom meant I missed them by twenty-four hours). Waking up deathly early, I soaked away grizzly jet lag in my spacious room’s egg-shaped tub.

Setting an early alarm while on vacation never comes easily to me, but making time to wander Babylonstoren’s fruit and vegetable garden before the day’s searing heat took hold was no problem. One of the oldest Cape Dutch farms, set at the foot of Simonsberg in Cape Town’s Franschhoek wine valley, it’s a sprawling, fantastical, technicolor utopia — positively Eden-like, with a lot more than apples to tempt you. Scarecrows made from terracotta plant pots wave from fields teeming with 300 edible crops, fat pomegranates growing alongside tangy tamarillos, willow trees swaying in the breeze.