Algeria: The Tassili n'Ajjer region, in the Algerian Saharan, offers one of the most spectacular desertscapes in the world, the largest pre-historic rock art open air museum and a bloody history of the heroic Tuareg resistance to the French colonisation of the Sahara.
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Australia: Watch the sunset from the top (literally) of Sydney Bridge. Fly to Thursday Island, take a boat back to Cape York and face the 6-day off road drive down the Old Telegraph Road through Aboriginal land. It does not get more outback than this.

South Africa: A week cruising the open and empty spaces of the Karoo Desert and a week exploring the hidden diamond mining seaside communities of the little travelled Northern Cape will give you a new perspective of this much visited country.
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Namibia: My absolutely favourite. I backpacked, lived and worked in this part of the Planet which, I am sure, was created to be God's meditation room. The scale, variety and grandiose beauty of each landscape are a permanent invitation to journey, outwardly and inwardly. Ask me about Namibia.
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Botswana: Sleep to the sound of lions roaring across the saltpans of the Kalahari Desert, get lost among the lilies and papyrus of the Okavango's water mazes, share the roads and rivers with hordes of elephants, warthogs and hippos in the Chobe Region, and still you won't have seen half of what Botswana has to offer.
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Brazil: My homeland. Hospitality and natural beauty on a continental scale. To experience the best of it avoid the large cities and take to the road. From Rio, go north via the coast. Focus on Bahia's little villages such as Trancoso and Arraial D'Ajuda and islands like Boipeba and Morro de Sao Paulo. Continue north towards Recife and Fortaleza making sure to stop in Praia do Pipa, Fernando de Noronha Island and Lencois Maranhaenses before heading to the Amazon.
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Iceland: I first went to Iceland to watch the Northern Lights and do glacier trekking, but I found so much more. The combination of raw, surreally beautiful nature, gentle people and one of the best nightlife in Europe kept me going back.

Peru: My favourite South American country has several 'must sees'. Despite of the crowds, Machu Picchu, Cuzco and the Inca Trail still hold an otherworldly feel if visited outside the tourist season. The same goes for Arequipa, the Moorish city built with white lava and the enigma of the Nazca Lines. Magic and ancient mysteries abound in Peru.

Tanzania: This is Attenborough's Africa. The lone acacia decorating the golden Serengeti savanna over a sunset sky. Hundreds of wildebeest on their yearly migration patiently followed by the next level up of the food chain. And Zanzibar, oh magical Zanzibar. There I turn into a character of the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.
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Egypt: Another of my favourites. I have never forgotten the magic I felt going down the Nile on a felucca, docking at the entrance of otherworldly temples and watching life happening on the flooded banks pretty much in the same way it did centuries ago. But it was the sunrise seen from the top a calcareous bolder that held my heart. You have to look at the pictures to understand.
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Kenya: The trip from Nairobi to the Chalbi Desert and the Turkana Lake, the largest desert lake in the world at the Ethiopian border, is a great adventure and gives you the chance to see a much less explored part of Kenya than the parks in the south.
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Malawi: The road to Malawi took us through the Mikumi National Park where, for about thirty minutes we drove through a surreal forest of baobab trees. According to our guide, some of the largest trees were more than two million years old. From their round, swollen trunks sprout out skinny naked branches in the shape of deformed, pleading arms of hell bound souls reminding Botticelli’s Inferno de Dante.
The sight of hundreds of these trees scattered across the dry, flat land with the tall, green mountains in the background conjured dalinesque mythical figures about to walk out of the canvas. The proudest living things I have seen in Tanzania, those awesome trees have not been tamed by missionaries or spoon-fed by aid workers. The ancient beings seemed to stand there on a mission: to be the sole retainers of the vanishing African soul.

Mali: I went to Mali in 2006 for the Festival of the Desert. A surreal event, it takes place amidst the Sahara’s golden dunes 80km from Timbuktu, showcases the best of Western African music and celebrates everything Tuareg. An unforgettable experience that should figured in anyone’s ‘Do before you die” list. Just make sure to have enough time before or after the festival to take a boat down the Niger River, visit Djenne, Timbuktu and the Dogon country.
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Niger: If you are obsessed with deserts, like me, it does not get much better than Niger’s Tenere Desert, at the heart of the Sahara. You can fly from Paris direct into the Tuareg capital of Agadez in less than four hours and find yourself in what could be another planet. The memory of silently sitting by a never-ending corridor of sand, bordered by towering golden dunes, as a caravan of hundreds of camels transported salt from the desert mines to Agadez will be imprinted onto my senses forever.
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Morocco: Ok, Marrakech and Fez have riads, restaurants and souqs that will make you feel in the middle of a 1,000 Arabian Nights story, but only by trekking in the Atlas Mountains that you will see the real Moroccan way of life in villages still only accessible via donkey or feet.
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Ethiopia: Whatever makes your heart sing, you can find it in Ethiopia: a centuries’ old culture that mixes history and legend leaving you wondering where Sheba ends and where Rastafari starts; unmatched religious architecture in the rock churches of Lalibela and Tigray, and my personal favourites: the otherworldly landscapes and bellicose nomads of the Danakil Desert.
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Turkey: Byzantium, Constantinople or Istanbul, depending upon your wavelength, is still one of the most interesting and exciting capitals on the Planet. Taking a boat through the Bosporus and realizing that one bank of the channel is Europe and the other is Asia is quite an unparallel feeling. But that is only a tiny bit of all the surprises that this country reserves.
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Zambia: The best place to see unspoiled African wildlife and the home of the best guides in the continent.

Zimbabwe: Vic falls is best seen from the Zimbabwe side, where you can also satisfy your adrenaline addiction for lifetime: rafting, bungee jumping, skydiving and more all on the same street. It will cost you dearly though, but what the hell…
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Malta:Click on the country for photos.

UK: Home sweet home.

Italy: The land of my ancestors and my favourite country in Europe. Ah the gelato, the wine and the pesto…