Holidaying in the Italian lakes has its charms, but Como again? In Condé Nast Traveller (August), William Cook recommended instead heading for Lake Constance - "one of Europe's best-kept secrets".
Also known as the Bodensee (German for "earth sea"), the lake is central Europe's second biggest and forms a border between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Although "international traffic has dwindled to a few pleasure boats", you can still make out "a rich flotsam of antique ports and palaces" among the fishing vessels and ferries.
Cook marvelled at how Lake Constance could shift from "quaint and kitsch" to "deep and wide and vaguely sinister, like the scene of an unsolved crime".
Undeterred, he dipped a toe into the three countries, beginning with Germany's Friedrichshafen, birthplace of the Zeppelin. Still under the influence of the lake's "strange magic", Cook described how the inevitable teenagers drinking in a park "acquire an air of mystery, like bit-part players in the opening scene of a foreign film".
After a brief visit to Austria, the town of Rorschach tested Cook's assumptions about Switzerland being "tidy and boring", proving instead to be "casual and interesting an intriguing mishmash".
The magazine also featured the snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is "melting so rapidly that it could disappear within a decade". The Tanzanian tourist board is understandably worried, and Hemingway fans should book now to catch a glimpse of the peak described in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, his greatest short story, as "wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun".
With The Motorcycle Diaries, a film version of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's eye-opening road trip through impoverished South America, about to open in Britain, Global (July/August) followed David Atkinson along the newly opened Che Guevara Trail in Bolivia.
"While its Andean neigh bour Peru is all about coach parties and tour agencies, Bolivia is quieter, calmer and somehow feels more real. Peru has Machu Picchu, the rainforest and the Nazca lines. Bolivia has Tiahuanaco, the Beni and the Che trail. Plus a fraction of the crowds, far, far lower prices and a vaguely charming innocence about tourism."
The trail begins in Santa Cruz and follows the last days of the revolutionary leader, through "rustic pueblos " to La Higuera where he was captured and "met his untimely end".
The project, after two years of improvements to the tourism infrastructure, "hopes to convert the hero-worship and iconography of Che into tourist greenbacks.
If successful, it will inject much-needed cash into one of Bolivia's poorest rural communities." Surely he would have approved.
In Australia, Rodney Bolt went on his own journey of the soul for Wanderlust (August/September), driving solo from Melbourne to Sydney.
For all the delights of the Great Ocean Road - rolling hills, sandy beaches, kangaroos and rainforests - something was lacking. Bolt had a moment of clarity while gazing at the Southern Cross and sipping wine in a Jacuzzi: "There are times when travelling alone really sucks. If this were a movie, I would have picked up a hitchhiker by now and be heading for reckless adventure or heady romance."
Stopping for the night in Port Fairy, Bolt lamented that "if the previous night's Jacuzzi-with-a-view had been romantic, [this hotel] with a riverside veranda smothered in white climbing roses was even more so." He "stomped off to the local pub for a solitary steak and chips".
A few hours in the outback, however, with "magnificent views of absolutely nothing", brought a revelation. "For once, driving alone had a point. I felt completely detached, totally free, unassailable, unstoppable and calm." And so ended the loneliness of the long-distance driver.
