The grizzly bear has lost patience. She’s no more than 20m away, trying to cross this slough with her cubs, which are steadfastly refusing to follow, and now she’s glancing at us. We are five passengers wedged in a small boat in the remote southern edge of Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. Steady, I think, catching the eye of the long-lensed Welshman perched at the bow, taking pictures. The bear has clocked him, as well…

There's a wistful sense that this tiny coral anklet in the Indian Ocean belongs only to us.

Peak tourist season is over. Getting to the far-flung northwestern reach of Baa Atoll in the Maldives has taken two days: an overnight in Kuala Lumpur, a flight to the capital Malé, a 30-minute seaplane and a speeding boat to land on a bone-white beach at the edge of Tiffany-blue infinity …

The distance between us has been unimaginable in a world marred by conflict. So, a few months ago, I suggested bridging geographic and generational divides by joining a 10-day trek on the Transcaucasian Trail across the Greater Caucasus mountains.

HERITAGE Explorer slides on glassy water away from Milford Sound towards the open ocean.

"The swell's only up to here on a seagull," cheers Captain Dave Barraclough, tapping his forearm with two fingers. "Almost calm enough for water skiing."

The albatross gliding past the wheelhouse at exactly that moment must be the portent of doom for, soon, a banshee's wail of maritime fury is sweeping across this raw-boned, ice-sculpted frontier.

Venice is an apparition in a burst of sunlight under the wing of the aeroplane.

It rises out of water on a patchwork of more than 100 Italian islands in the middle of a swampy lagoon on the Adriatic Sea.

There’s an improbable strangeness to this place built stone upon stone, menaced by rising tides, supported by centuries-old subterranean piers and timbers.

How can it exist at all?

I’m normally committed to keeping my clothes on in public so, yes, I do wonder at my decision now. It wasn’t for clicks, or ego, or some ‘authentic life’ media stunt to gain attention.

It was for art.

And that’s the naked truth of it.

WHITE houses are bathing in the honeyed glow of late afternoon. Water laps beneath wooden decking. Guests with impeccable tans waft around the bar where a Brazilian bossa nova singer croons into a microphone under a bower of pink bougainvillea.

This is the view from my cushioned sun-lounger at the legendary Macakizi Hotel, near Bodrum, on Turkey's Turquoise Coast. It's a laid-back Gatsby kind of vibe but I'm regretting, what is it, my second gin martini?

You don’t have to be a Viking to experience the fundamental joy of plunder. Albanian-born Tani Gurra steps forward, retrieves the wax-sealed bottle encrusted with coral and, with a flourish befitting his role as beverage director of Hurtigruten, pops the cork. Sparkling wine fresh as an oyster flows into my champagne coupe.

“Say ‘bubbles’,” he grins, taking a bow for the classic cuvee that’s been ocean-aged over six months in the Arctic Circle at a depth of 34 metres …

I am slow to notice Maximilian Habsburg-Lothringen emerge under a balcony overhung with vines.

There is no trumpet fanfare announcing my audience with the two-times great-grandson of a Habsburg emperor, just an outstretched hand, and a smile.

“Herr is fine,” explains the man in a greenish-grey loden jacket who might have been archduke ...

"Allow me, madam," says Samil Sahin, white gloves whisking away suitcases.

Samil is the sort of man who can whip up an Espresso Martini blindfolded while calculating the precise amount of time it takes to sail across the Bosphorus Strait.

He is my butler.

"Ask me for an elephant and I will ask you what colour," he chirrups, steering towards a plush ivory lounge in the foyer ...

It’s the rule of thirds,” Matt Griffiths declares, stooping under branches the colour of bleached bones on the stony flanks of Mt Strzelecki.

“It’s an old mountaineering saying that two-thirds of all accidents happen on descent,” he warns, “but I always think that the last third of the mountain takes two-thirds of the effort.”

Comfort has slipped away in an infinite whiteness whipping through trees scrawled tightly around him …

The bear sighs. Sounds human.

She’s invisible in a steel cage, a shadowy mound curled into herself, concealing the glorious lemon crescent of moon emblazoned on her chest.

Unthinkably, she’s been incarcerated for 24 years, until two days ago, when she was rescued from a bear bile farm and delivered to a sanctuary in the lush foothills of the Tam Dao mountain range in Northern Vietnam ...

In the ancient Vietnamese town of Hoi An, between the 1000-year-old blue stone temples and the mustard-yellow pagodas, a seamstress is at work in an old tailor shop.

Every generation in human history has had its own paragon of female beauty and Pamela Van has less than seven hours to realise mine ….

It is the morning before the Moroccan earthquake in the ancient heart of Fes ….

There are many beguiling footnotes in this monumental building, but it’s hard to top the one about King Ludwig I of Bavaria who came twice a month for a bath after the hotel opened in 1841 ...

It’s a savage day in the Tasmanian midlands but the spine-chilling cold goes deeper than the shallow, worn flagstones in The Commissariat Store.

“I see this place very differently now,” confides weather-beaten Jon McCure, sheltering from a howling gale in the lime-washed fortress that squats above the heritage village of Oatlands …

Stand close to almost any cliff on the Great Ocean Road and you appreciate the perils of the Shipwreck Coast, serrated as a knife along the rim of the wild Southern Ocean. More than 700 hulks lie in the fathomless depths of this graveyard beneath the sea. On a windswept bluff near Port Campbell, two headstones are tucked under heathland in a tiny cemetery marking the calamitous loss of the ill-fated Loch Ard in the pre-dawn hours of June 1, 1878.

It’s reasonable to expect the Cobourg Peninsula will be chock full of wild things but a glass of chilled champagne on arrival has a way of softening reality. So we’re radiating calm beside a lagoon pool, plumped into cushions overlooking a pristine cove in a wilderness resort that can only be accessed by boat or private air charter, entirely unprepared for what follows ...

It’s just past dawn in peaceful art-deco Murwillumbah where an early morning queue has formed outside a tiny hole-in-the-wall bakery at the trendy end of town. There are plenty of skilled technicians in the pastry world but few of them are magicians like Ben Leonardi.

Three things exercise a constant influence over the minds of men’," wrote Voltaire in the mid 18th century. ‘Climate, government and religion.’ Climate change anxieties as old as time come up as we wend our way over the twisting viaducts of the astonishingly beautiful Bernina Railway in Switzerland.

It’s winter and the tiny alpine village of Pontresina, in the Engadin Valley, is blessed by golden sunshine.