Lonely Planet

Discovering the world from home • Mountain heights on film • Virtual museum visits • Late spring cocktail face-off: margarita vs mint julep • Courses, parties, podcasts and workouts for lockdown ■

Many mountaineers say Everest is becoming crowded – but it’s unlikely that the year 2020 will add much to the 5,000-or-more tally of people who have climbed to the highest point on Earth. Travel restrictions have halted mountaineers and regular sight

Online offerings at London’s terracotta temple to nature include skeletal dinosaurs, game-changing scientific discoveries and a tour of the tank room, which is normally open only for specially booked visits (artsandculture. google.com/partner/ natura

A new book, Cooking in Marfa (£35; Phaidon), celebrates a town that’s an unlikely haven of art and fine dining in the Texas desert – try this recipe for vivid flavours of the US Southwest and Mexico, even if you don’t go as far as grinding your own g

50 ml tequila (100% agave)20 ml triple sec15 ml freshly squeezedlime juice Add all the ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Half salt the rim (optional). 60 ml Bourbon whiskey4 fresh mint sprigs1 tsp

With its rows of little white bells looking demurely down from each stalk, lily of the valley is a beautifully understated sign of spring in full bloom. Just remember that all parts of the plant are highly poisonous if ingested – as fans of the TV se

New Zealand’s appeal as a film backdrop is proven, whether its landscape is doubling as Middle Earth, Narnia or Skull Island, or starring as itself in the likes of Hunt for the Wilderpeople . It’s in the second category that a six-part BBC series fal

Photo Challenge: home • Sue Perkins on the fascination of Kolkata, and coming late to travel • Snapshot: a dazzling bird • Exploring the unknown… attic • What I’ve learned travelling for wine ■

Historically, the Perkins tribe were neither explorers, nor adventurers. Dad traced his family tree back 200 years and discovered that all the men had been either labourers or soldiers, and all the women charladies. None of my ancestors got the chanc

The Indian Roller is a wondrous creature whose beauty has always mesmerised me. It is the symbol of several states in India. During my early morning safari at Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand, we saw many interesting birds, and we also came across

The elephant is so close I can hear him chew. His powerful jaws crunch effortlessly through a mouthful of whistling thorn acacia, a tree with the texture of a medieval mace. Another member of the herd is grunting with exertion as she uproots a bush,

• We accept that travel to Kenya is not advised at present, we hope that this information will prove useful again once restrictions are lifted. See p4 for more on our approach. Ordinarily, British Airways and Kenya Airways both fly to Nairobi-Kenyatt

The wind shakes the white manes of the horses, and sends ripples across the flooded fields of rice. Twelve miles away in the city of Arles, the parasols of pavement cafés become unruly. This is the mistral, against which Vincent Van Gogh once had to

• We accept that travel to the Camargue is not advised at present, but hope that this information will prove useful again once restrictions are lifted. See p5 for more on our approach. The two closest airports to the Camargue region are Montpellier-M

Father Christmas doesn’t set much store by tradition in the town of Saariselkä. It’s August, and his smiling face, hacked out of wood, welcomes people into the town’s supermarket. Two paces inside and there he is again, wielding an axe and lantern, c

Travel to Finland is not advised at present, but we hope this information will still be valid when restrictions are lifted. See p4 for more on our approach. It’s a two-hop journey from Britain, with flights routing to local airport Ivalo via Helsinki

I’d know the sound of Melbourne anywhere. It’s the electric whine of an approaching tram and the jaunty clanging of its bells. It’s the rattle and hiss of street artists’ spray cans as they paint the walls of a bluestone laneway. It’s the cries of st

So little happens in a hurry around Luang Prabang, and that suits me fine. I especially love getting out into the villages that are one to three hours from the city – you can catch a boat to small farming communities that are unreachable by road. Loc

Parkhouse Hill is sometimes described as the only true peak in the Peak District. Where the surrounding hills have forgiving contours and very polite gradients, Parkhouse Hill swoops like a mini-Matterhorn over the Upper Dove Valley. It owes its shap

1 Which Greek island, the site of a volcanic eruption around 1600 BCE, was a possible inspiration for the legend of Atlantis? 2 ‘Songlines’ up to 40,000 years old cross which country? 3 Tórshavn (‘Thor’s Harbour’) is the capital of which self-gover

Begun in 1406 under the Ming Dynasty, the Forbidden City was home to Chinese emperors until a few years beyond the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 (as seen in the film, The Last Emperor). This garden statue is of a qilin – a mythical animal best des

The Great Barrier Reef extends over 1,400 miles (more than twice the length of Great Britain) from the Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea in the north, to Lady Elliot Island just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Some 1,500 species

The founders of _____ probably meant its name to signify ‘fair winds’, but it more readily translates as ‘good airs’. It’s not the largest city on its continent (that honour goes to _____) but being further south it gets to feel the change of seasons