Independent on Sunday, 26 April 2009. The oil industry is providing an unlikely aid to tourism in this US state. Polly Evans takes the Dalton Highway into the heart of the wilderness

Voyager, February 2009. It must be something they put in the Guinness: Dublin has bred more than its fair share of pen-wielding, string-strumming, hell-raising geniuses...

Our Hospedaje in Puyuhaupi was cheap, and I would love to have said cheerful but in reality was pretty grim. The walls were made of plywood, the gas cooker dropped in by plane, the patchy linoleum floor (at one time a flower patterned design now indecipherable) was almost level and the ceiling and door lintel was low as my forehead will testify...

A few months ago, my friend Gavin’s mum Pat very kindly sent me a book through the post that she thought I’d enjoy. It was Will Randall’s Botswana Time. I liked it immensely, and told her so – and then, a few weeks later, another book dropped through the letterbox and onto the mat: Indian Summer by the same author. So given the many happy hours I've been spending on the sofa with Will Randall, so to speak, those are the two books that I’m reviewing this month.

Condé Nast Traveller, March 2009. And now for something completely different: how about a high-latitude escape for spring?

www.GreatOutdoors.com, February 2009. The three of us stood stripped to our underwear and contemplated the rushing glacial stream. The water came to hip height—if we wanted to stay dry we’d have to undress still further—but wordlessly we agreed to cling to this one last vestige of propriety. And then, backpack waist straps unclipped in case of calamity and using each other’s bodies for support, we inched our way through the numbing torrents...

GreatOutdoors.com, February 2009. I’ve never been good with the cold, so it was with some nervousness that I set off for three months in Canada’s Yukon Territory, where winter temperatures drop to forty below and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. My mission was to learn to drive sled dogs...

Traveller, winter 2008/09. It wasn't my idea to go to the Arctic. I've never been good with the cold....

I asked for three books for Christmas. The first two, Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I read over the Christmas break in front of the blazing fire in my parents’ house. The third, A Complete Guide to Arctic Wildlife by Richard Sale, is more suited to years of browsing than a read through, though I have already found out the difference between a mountain hare and an Arctic hare...

Like a good bottle of wine the Nepalese hills are a lot of fun and usually half-empty. Hit the foothills at the right time and the paths and the views are all yours. We were on the Langtang circuit running up to the Ganja-La and then back down to pizzas and a comfy bed...