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I’ve always wanted to go to Iceland, since studying the language of Old Norse at university. Old Norse was the language of the Vikings and is still spoken with hardly any change in the same way it was when Iceland’s first Viking settler built his farmstead in ad 874 and named it Reykjavik – meaning ‘smoky bay’. The name comes from the steam that rises from many geothermal springs in what is now the heart of Reykjavik – the world’s northernmost capital.

In May I was invited to The Great Indian Travel Bazaar held in Jaipur, Rajasthan province. Representatives of the travel trade from more than 42 countries were invited, including a few travel writers, of which I was fortunate enough to be one. It was a glittering, well-organized affair – India’s first-ever Travel Bazaar – and was opened by the charismatic Ms Ambika Soni, Honourable Union Minister of Tourism and Culture, Government of India.

At the end of last year I was invited on a Peter Deilmann cruise which wended its way along one of Europe’s great rivers from Potsdam to Prague. I visited some fascinating historical towns such as Wittenberg (where Martin Luther changed the face of Christianity forever), Dresden and Meissen.