So why have I never got around to visiting Ethiopia? Everybody who has been there has loved the

So why have I never got around to visiting Ethiopia? Everybody who has been there has loved the place and I can point at two sources for why it’s sitting on my list. Two of the Yemen visitors I know were kidnapped, it almost became part of the tourist experience. Perhaps having Bin Laden as your best-known former citizen didn’t help either Africa is riddled with “must go there” places. I realise I’ve not dedicated enough time to African travels, although every trip I’ve made there has rated somewhere between very enjoyable and absolutely wonderful.

The Yemen was on its way to becoming a popular exotic destination until the local propensity for kidnapping visitors took the shine off things. Jonathan Raban’s Passage To Juneau is a satisfyingly seductive introduction to the trip, although he does add marriage breakdown and divorce to the more normal blend of glaciers, wildlife and history.The amazing architecture – skyscrapers made of mud – has to be the prime attraction for my interest in Yemen, since I have yet to read Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s Travels In Dictionaryland. The fact that Geoff Dyer found the Marquesas just about as disappointing as Libya, and Paul Theroux went there on the Aranui in his wonderfully grumpy Happy Isles Of Oceania doesn’t matter.The Inside Passage to Alaska is the other boat trip must do. So the trip out there on the passenger-cargo vessel Aranui is definitely on my list.

It’s taken me up (I’ve mountain biked across those spiky peaks in the middle of Tahiti) and down (I’ve met the sharks at the lagoon passes on Rangiroa) but for some reason it hasn’t taken me to Gauguin Land, the Marquesas. I’ve had a Polynesian interest for years which has dragged me all around the region, even out to the Pitcairn Islands. Unfortunately George and Tony decided to invade Iraq before I managed to get there, and trying to make the world safe from terrorism seems to have done the complete opposite, despite which Iraq definitely remains on my list.Much more mundanely, there are two boat trips I’ve got to get around to. I’d already been to Iran, I went to North Korea soon afterwards and since Saudi Arabia seemed a curious omission from George’s list I went there too. When he posted up his Axis of Evil hit parade it seemed an obvious inventory to tick off. Given that I travel between Europe and Asia at least a couple of times a year it’s a serious embarrassment that I’ve never done the trip by rail.Then there’s Iraq, which I’ll blame on George W. I think I’ll blame Kashgar-fascination on all the books, starting with Peter Fleming’s News From Tartary The Trans-Siberian Express is the other list survivor.

I’ve travelled in Western Tibet to within a couple of days’ drive of Kashgar, the northern end of the highway, but the Karakoram Highway still beckons. I’ve still not travelled the Karakoram Highway up and over that western outlier of the Himalayan range from Pakistan into China. That had resulted in a lengthy stay in Afghanistan during the Taliban era among other adventures. Lots of Korean travellers seem to approach their journeys with the same energy that has propelled their country up the economic ladder.