Where to go in December

Maldives

An archipelago of around 1,200 low-lying coral islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, grouped into 26 atolls. Known for over-water villas, clear shallow lagoons, and some of the richest reef diving anywhere.

Egypt

The last surviving wonder of the ancient world, three monumental pyramids and the Great Sphinx on the Giza plateau, built over 4,500 years ago on the edge of Cairo and the Western Desert.

Colombia

The heat hits you the moment you step out of the airport, thick and salt-edged from the Caribbean. Inside the walled city, the walls themselves are the colour of ochre and rust, and every balcony has something spilling over it: bougainvillea, laundry, a cat. Street vendors carry baskets of fruit on their heads and call out prices you'll negotiate badly the first time.

India

You walk through a red sandstone gateway, past hawkers and security checks, and then it's just there, white marble framed by dark cypress trees, reflected in a long pool that never seems to ripple. It's smaller than you expect from the photos but the detail is overwhelming: semi-precious stones inlaid petal by petal, calligraphy carved so fine it looks printed. The colour shifts through the day, pinkish at dawn, blazing white at noon, golden at sunset. Agra around it is chaotic and charmless, which somehow makes the Taj more startling. One building, built for grief, that stops traffic 400 years later.

Guatemala

The cobblestones are uneven enough to turn an ankle if you're looking at your phone instead of your feet, which is understandable because Volcán Agua sits at the end of nearly every street like someone placed it there deliberately. Antigua is a colonial city kept intact by earthquakes that destroyed it and a preservation law that keeps it that way: yellow and ochre facades, bougainvillea spilling over ruined convents, and a central park where shoe shiners and schoolchildren occupy the same benches.

New Zealand

A lakeside town on New Zealand's South Island, ringed by the jagged peaks of the Remarkables and set on clear Lake Wakatipu. A year-round base for adventure, from bungee jumping and skiing to scenic hikes and wineries.

Thailand

You smell it before you see it, incense and grilled pork and jasmine, drifting out of temple compounds and night market stalls in equal measure. Chiang Mai is northern Thailand's old walled capital, ringed by a moat and backed by forested mountains. Inside the old city, 300 temples compete for attention between coffee shops and massage parlours. Outside it, rice terraces step up into hill-tribe country. The pace is slower than Bangkok, the food is arguably better, and everything costs half as much.

Canada

The water really is that colour, an impossible turquoise that looks photoshopped until you're standing at the edge of Lake Louise watching glacial silt catch the morning light. Banff is the Canadian Rockies compressed into a national park: valleys that dead-end at blue-white glaciers, elk wandering through town like they pay rent, and a two-lane highway (the Icefields Parkway) that might be the best drive on the continent. The town itself is touristy and expensive, $9 craft beers, souvenir shops selling moose plush toys, but step onto any trailhead and within 20 minutes you're alone with mountains that make you feel appropriately small.

Australia

The air is cold and smells like rain and eucalyptus even in summer. Tasmania is an island that didn't get the memo about tourist infrastructure: roads narrow to single lanes through ancient rainforest, dolerite columns rise out of sea mist on the southwest coast, and the silence in the interior is the kind that makes city people uncomfortable at first. Give it a day. Then you won't want to leave.

India

The walls really are pink, a warm terracotta that deepens at dusk until the whole old city glows like an ember. Auto-rickshaws horn their way past camel carts on roads that predate traffic lights, and somewhere inside the bazaars of Johari Bazar, a tailor is threading a needle while negotiating a price without looking up. The palaces are enormous, the crowds are real, and the chai is non-negotiable.

Malaysia

The Petronas Towers appear around corners when you least expect them, framed between colonial shophouses, rising above a wet market, reflected in a puddle after the 4pm downpour that arrives like clockwork. KL is a city of overlapping worlds: Malay, Chinese, Indian, colonial British, and gleaming glass towers, all compressed into a skyline that makes no visual sense but somehow works. The food is the real reason to come.

Switzerland

A landscape that somehow exceeds every postcard you've ever seen, jagged peaks, glacial lakes the colour of liquid turquoise, and mountain railways engineered into cliff faces that would be reckless anywhere else.