No tricks, just magic

I've watched TV wildlife documentaries all my life and, evocative as they are, there's nothing to match the hilarity of hearing a giraffe sneeze, the intestinal rumbling of an elephant, the click in the knee joint of a dominant eland surrounded by its harem, or the spike of adrenalin triggered by the trumpet blast of an annoyed male elephant in musk.

There are some experiences that cannot be replicated in 3D. Like first love or near death, the first African safari of your life is unforgettable.

More information Wildlife Safari is a family-run specialist with headquarters in Nairobi and Perth; see wildlifesafari.com.au.

Elsewhere, between the sheets Ninety minutes' flight from Sydney is a beautiful palm-fringed subtropical island teeming with rare wild creatures and dominated by rugged volcanic peaks. Only 400 visitors are allowed on Lord Howe Island at once (as well as 300 residents), so it feels like a pristine, well-kept secret. And so does Capella Lodge, with its luxe beach-house ambience, fabulous meals (kingfish sashimi, caught this morning) and suites with views of ocean and mountain. From $700 a person a night, twin share, including breakfast, dinner with wine, sunset drinks and airport transfers; see lordhowe.com.

Dateline: Mustang, Nepal

Louise Southerden

The 25th king of Mustang, Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista, seems to have nodded off. It has taken five days of up-and-down trekking from Jomsom to reach Lo Manthang, the capital, and I've just climbed four flights of ladder-like stairs to the top floor of the city's whitewashed, mudbrick "palace" - no easy feat at an altitude of almost 4000 metres.

Now I'm standing with a handful of other trekkers and an interpreter at the end of a long room decorated with colourful carpets, waiting for the 78-year-old king seated peacefully at the other end to, well, wake up.

An attendant clears his throat. The king raises his head and we step forward, one by one, to present the monarch with white ceremonial scarves, bowing low so he can drape them around our necks.

While we sit on a carpeted bench by the windows, jasmine green tea is served and we're invited to ask questions - anything but politics, a touchy subject given Mustang's proximity to Tibet. Someone begins: Has the king travelled to other countries? Yes, to Singapore, the US, Israel. The rest of us join in: What's your favourite place in Mustang? Lo Manthang, because he was born here and it's a wild city. Does the king use a computer? No. Watch television? Sometimes; Tibetan programs (he speaks Tibetan and Loba, the local language). And the last question: Would the king like more tourists to visit Mustang? Oh yes, he says, with a gentle smile. (The kingdom was closed to outsiders until 1992 and is still a restricted area, accessible only by permit.)

We stand, bow in thanks and descend the ladder-like stairs, trying not to trip on the king's blessings, the white scarves we're still wearing. We walk back to our tents with a royal glow, accompanied by the jingle of horse bells.

More information World Expeditions runs 16-day Kingdom of Mustang treks in April and September, from $3790; see worldexpeditions.com.

Elsewhere, between the sheets There's no better way to see the magical ice world of Antarctica than from a balcony suite on board the MV Orion. It's five-star luxury in the wild Southern Ocean and through its sliding glass doors I see albatross and icebergs, even 10-metre waves that chase the ship one stormy night. Staterooms on Orion's 18-night Mawson's Antarctica voyages cost from $19,365 a person (balcony suites $34,915 a person); see orionexpeditions.com.

Dateline: Khongoryn Els, Mongolia

Stephen Phelan

We want to see the sun set on the highest dunes of the Gobi Desert - the so-called "singing sands". Our guide, Chimgee, doesn't want to leave the camp. She huffily tells us to go ahead, if we don't mind our dinner getting cold.

The camel driver, Ulzii, forces us to gallop all the way there, which makes it a short, painful trip bouncing between the twin humps of Xap (black) and Zuap (yellow). Then he turns around and takes our transport with him. Apparently, Ulzii prefers his dinner hot. "You can walk back, easy," he says.

"In the dark?" we shout after him.

So we climb the steepest flank of sand, which is already in the shade, as the sun begins to set on the other side. The upper ridges are glowing, more than 800 metres above us. The fine grains really do "sing" under our bare feet and whistle as they blow across the surface.

We reach the summit just in time to watch the sky burst into red flames, the dunes curving to the horizon in tessellations of gold and deep black shadow.

It's one of those rare moments that allow you to kid yourself - for a few seconds we're not tourists but travellers, following the trail of Marco Polo and seeing what he saw.

The abiding maxim of modern tourism is to "take only pictures, leave only footprints". But when we begin the long return walk to camp under the stars, we look back to see that our footprints are already blowing away.

More information Manlai's Tours; see guesthousemongolia.mn.

Elsewhere, between the sheets I could happily take up residence in Hotel Rialto, Warsaw, in my beautifully furnished suite in this fine-detailed art deco building. It's as close as I will ever get to living my decadent dream of the 1920s. There are 44 individually designed rooms, on quiet, upmarket Wilcza Street, from €70 ($90); see rialtowarsaw.com.

Dateline: Tokyo, Japan

Leisa Tyler

It starts with a rock. A moss-covered stone the size of a brick sits on the snow-white tablecloth. The stone is perfumed like the forest: a dewy, peaty smell from the deepest, darkest woodlands. Beside it is a second rock, its carbon case tinged green. Inside is butter. Its partner - the bread - has recently finished rising with the aid of candlelight at the far end of the table and is now baking in a stone pot scented with oak and yuzu.

Yoshihiro Narisawa's crisp, minimalist Tokyo restaurant, Narisawa, is all about drama. The charred fritter that kicks off my 10-course degustation meal looks - rather unappetisingly - like a giant slug. But that first bite opens a flavour heaven, the smoky, carbonised shell hiding a plump, lightly cooked Toba oyster from Japan's Mie prefecture.

The Hida wagyu rump has been marinated with leek, basted in olive oil and then carbonised to resemble a lump of coal on the outside, fuchsia-pink on the inside.

Polished, polite and premeditated, with no menu and even fewer choices, this is a beguiling theatre of the taste bud, Japanese style. Even the toilet demands a reaction - the seat rising on approach, like a royal wave.

More information Narisawa, see narisawa-yoshihiro.com. Lunch costs from 8085 yen ($100); degustation dinners 23,000 yen.

Elsewhere, between the sheets The Paris debut of Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts might just show the French a thing or two about hospitality. The former palace of Napoleon Bonaparte's grand nephew, Roland Bonaparte, the Shangri-La Paris has 54 rooms within its stone walls, some with a bird's-eye view of the Eiffel Tower and - for an Asian touch - multilingual staff speaking French, English and Chinese, of course. Rooms from €800, see shangri-la.com.

Dateline: Yellowstone National Park, US

Lance Richardson

With fumaroles, a boiling lake and obsessive "geyser gazers", there's no shortage of oddities among the cottonwoods of Yellowstone.

But the park is fascinating most of all for its suggestiveness. On my first visit, in June, it strikes me as America writ small.

Here is the country's voracious curiosity, "bison jams" occurring wherever an animal is sighted near a road. Here is the bombast (palatial hotels), consumerism (RVs) and heightened dreaming (Yogi Bear) that's become synonymous with the star-spangled banner. To see Yellowstone is to see some essence of the US - its wonder, absurdity and latent wildness.

I return in September, infected by a pioneering spirit. Half the park is on fire and people have recently been mauled by bears but in a year full of risks, this feels like one more notch towards a black belt in adventure. Yellowstone officials like to say, almost daringly, that most visitors never stray more than one mile (1.6 kilometres) from the roads. I make it as far as Heart Lake, 22.5 kilometres on the map, before every tree begins to look like a grizzly. This is followed by a night so tense that the whir of a jet engine becomes an uncanny growl. Next morning, hanging my sweat-drenched sleeping bag by the shore, I notice claw marks on the trees around my tent.

Though the claw marks are enough to send me scuttling for a ranger's hut, I'm exhilarated by the experience. Founded in 1872, Yellowstone was the world's first national park. It has been called the US's greatest idea, a guarantee for the safeguarding of nature. A world without national parks would certainly be a poorer one.

More information See yellowstonenationalpark.com.

Elsewhere, between the sheets Surely a front runner for the strangest stay of the year, Spirit of Alaska Wilderness Adventures on Kodiak Island houses guests in a salmon cannery, abandoned since 1983. Expect otters and eagles stopping by to share breakfast. From $US1550 ($1512) a person for three days, including float-plane round trip; see spiritofalaska.com.

Dateline: Byron Bay, NSW

Max Anderson

I'm feeling decidedly grumpy: it's 35 degrees and the Byron off-train excursion on the Southern Spirit rail trip from Brisbane to Adelaide is being badly handled by a lousy local coach operator. I'm stuck on a ghastly grey bus heading for some dreary old lighthouse when I really want to be on the golden sands of Byron.

But the Cape Byron Lighthouse, a white needle high on the headland, reassures me in a wink of its prismatic eye.

I'm inspired and moved and not only by the impossibly beautiful views over inky blues, oily greens and those golden sands. Here is a modest piece of naval architecture built on the easternmost bit of a nation that had just federated: the colonies were no more; modern Australia had arrived; and ships sailing from the dark seas of the old world would hopefully see the point.

I'm transfixed by the rotating lens - eight tonnes of glass composited from 760 individual prisms, each one refracting the hard NSW light. I cajole the ranger into admitting me into the lantern room, a place that's hot and smells of brass. The eight-tonne monster lens turns smoothly, silently, driven by an electric motor the size of a sewing machine. The grace of the steady turn is facilitated by nothing more than a thin bed of oil - so simple, so gorgeous.

More information See greatsouthernrail.com.au.

Elsewhere, between the sheets The Swagon at Kangaluna Camp in the Gawler Ranges, South Australia, is a restored century-old dray, fitted with a (retractable) canopy and furnished rather beautifully with a large double swag. Birds and foraging wallabies do their best at dawn to wake you from a slumber fuelled by fresh air. Its costs $1560 for two nights, all meals included; see gawlerrangessafaris.com.

Dateline: Seat 17K on QF 9, Melbourne to Singapore

Dugald Jellie

Bubbles rise before take-off. Donna introduces herself; she offers champagne; I accept, then realise my toes cannot reach the seat in front. Everything about the prospect thrills. I send text messages. Play with seat buttons. Think of gin and tonics. And we're still on the apron.

Of course, it wasn't supposed to be like this. The ticket said economy. Emotionally I was ready for economy. Besides, I'm fond enough of fold-down tray tables, knocked elbows and the uprightness of it all. The best one hopes for is a neighbouring spare seat. How was I to know, not three hours later, high over Uluru, I'd be festooned in cotton napery and wielding cutlery on a braised duck?

It happens like this: I'm last to board, I present my pass, it jams in the machine. "A new ticket's been issued," an attendant says. A choir sings, angels wink. Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travel, has finally answered my call.

"Upgrade" is such a magical word - so unpredictable, so spontaneous - a contingency that changes travel in delightfully unscripted ways. I am guided onto the plane through an alternative walkway, shown up a staircase and enter a world where the cabin crew have higher cheekbones and whiter teeth, the TV screens pop up, chocolates are Valrhona and toilet lids are upholstered. Donna pours more bubbles. I want this to never end.

More information qantas.com.au.

Elsewhere, between the sheets As ornate as a wedding cake, all pomp and circumstance, Craig's Royal Hotel in Ballarat is where Mark Twain has stayed, Nellie Melba has sung from a balcony, where "Ming" Menzies, "the Don" and the Duke of Windsor have shared stories at the bar and taken rooms upstairs. This is a grande dame of hospitality.

Two-night packages cost from $395, twin share, including breakfast; see craigsroyal.com.au.

Dateline: Kainagunan village, near Rabaul, Papua New Guinea

Daniel Scott

We've gathered with the tribes at Rabaul for the Warwagira Mask Festival. It's a dark, soupy night and we've driven up a long, muddy track into the hills to this village. A raging fire is the only thing visible.

We can't see life but we can hear it. Rising on the wet, tropical air is a rhythmic chant and a staccato drumbeat. Suddenly, a bushy figure wearing a huge bird-like mask leaps out of the darkness. The mask has eyes like psychedelic dartboards, concentric ovals of red and black on a white background, with a bill protruding around a fat tongue. Dancing and half-hopping around the fire, the figure's leafy plumage glints in the firelight.

Two more men appear, swinging a live three-metre python, to be cooked and eaten the next day. Other figures, some resembling cassowaries and others wearing red cone-like hats topped by long antennas, join the dance, heaping branches onto the fire.

The chant builds, the drumbeat grows more urgent and the dancers move closer to the inferno, kicking up clouds of sparks with their bare feet. Then they're running right through it, stomping its burning core. Soon the dancers and the fire are indistinguishable, a swirl of leaping flames, smoke and wild-eyed masks.

More information Warwagira Mask Festival is on from July 18-21; see papuanewguinea.travel/EventsCalendar.

Elsewhere, between the sheets Sky House at Lifetime Retreats is set high among the coastal hills of Kangaroo Island, South Australia. This rammed-earth villa is among the most sensuous places I've stayed. Surrounded by golden fields of swaying grass, it feels intimately connected to the environment. The hardest choice is where to hang out: the day bed, the Villeroy & Boch bath-tub or on the terrace overlooking a turquoise ocean and curvy Snelling Beach.

More information From $410 a night; see life-time.com.au/index.php/sky.

Writers travelled courtesy of respective tour operators.