As the travel frontiers are extended by operators offering everything from underwater weddings in Thailand to short breaks on the Moon (advanced bookings only I'm afraid), the Tuscan villa or Majorcan farmhouse will simply no longer do. For holiday cachet, you may consider competing in the annual dry river-bed regatta in Alice Springs or the Wilderness Woman events, Talkeetna, Alaska. Alternatively, take the easy route to holiday kudos by visiting one of the places around the world that are renowned for an event of religious significance or of unusual phenomena.
Nazca Lines
Thirty years ago, Nazca was just another Peruvian one-horse town. The site was discovered in 1939 by Paul Kosok, a North American scientist, who first noticed outlines of animals, figures and birds (some up to 1,000ft long) scratched on to an arid plain he was flying over. But no one really took much notice until 1968 when Erich von Daniken in Chariots of the Gods claimed the area was an extra-terrestrial landing strip, and thus guaranteed it a tourist future. If these vast geometric shapes were etched for ceremonial purposes up to 1,200 years ago, as some cynics argue, why were they drawn on semi-desert flatlands that could only be appreciated from the air?
Way to go: Buy your admission ticket to the UFO landing strip through Explore (01252 760100) on its 22-day Peru Inca Trail for around £1,725 including flights, transfers, guide, accommodation and some meals.
Lourdes
Before the 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous (later Saint Bernadette) received her visions of the Virgin Mary in the Grotte de Massabielle in 1858, Lourdes was a quiet Pyrenean village. Now it has the highest concentration of hotels in France outside Paris.
The Blue Guide to France may call the town "an affront to any instinct of veneration", but this does not deter around five million visitors annually flocking here. Despite the numbers and the Blue Guide's lack of enthusiasm, it is still a place of fortitude, hope and miracles - more than 6,000 inexplicable recoveries from illness at the last count, around 60 of which have been designated miracles.
Way to go: The pilgrimage season runs from Easter until mid October. Mancunia Travel (0161-228 2842) offers four-day pilgrimages from £303, including return flights from Manchester, transfers and full-board accommodation (one-week pilgrimages also available).
Roswell
When a local newspaper in Roswell reported a UFO crash in 1947, the US military quickly closed off the area, thereby transforming a nondescript New Mexico town into the world UFO capital. Start your investigations on Main Street by visiting the UFO Museum & Research Center and the UFO Enigma Museum, adjacent to the old Roswell Army Air Field (where both the wreckage of the crashed space vehicle and the bodies of the aliens were allegedly taken).
Way to go: Premier Holidays (0870 7896688) offers a fly-drive to Albuquerque (the nearest airport) from Gatwick for £354 return, with car hire at £36 per day fully comprehensive.
Himalayas
In the 19th-century, reports of mysterious moving figures and large unidentifiable footprints in the Himalayas fired the British imagination, especially when a Fleet Street reporter claimed they belonged to an "abominable snowman".
In 1951, the story was given more credibility when the British mountaineer Eric Shipton, on an attempted ascent of Everest, took clear photographs of yeti tracks.
In 1954, another Fleet Street newspaper financed an expedition with an impressive team of experts that returned with more circumstantial evidence. And in 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest, reported seeing the yeti scalp of Khumjung (a village near Everest) and also purchased what he believed to be yeti furs. The relics kept at the gompa, or monastery, of Pangboche and Khumjung may have failed to provide scientific proof, but yaks and other livestock continue to be attacked and yeti assaults do tend to be pretty distinctive - they turn their prey inside out, wrench off the head, bash it on any handy rock and then break the legs into chopsticks!
Way to go: Worldwide Journeys (020-7381 8638) offers a 16-day Everest Base Camp trek on a three-week holiday in Nepal, costing from £1,845 and including flights, accommodation, most meals, porters and guide leaders.
Loch Ness
Surprisingly, perhaps, this is not a modern story. There is a record of St Columba meeting the monster, popularly referred to as Nessie, in the 6th century, and a 16th-century chronicle describes "a terrible beast issuing out of the water early one morning after midsummer, knocking down trees and killing three men with its tail".
Since the A82, running alongside the loch, was completed in 1933, the sightings have come thick and fast (the classic photograph of the dinosaur-like monster emerging from the lake was taken in 1934). Computer studies, underwater cameras and sonar hunts of the 900ft loch (Britain's deepest body of fresh water) may have failed to locate the monster but several monks at Fort Augustus abbey claim to have seen it, and plenty of visitors are willing to spend their holiday money here on the off-chance of catching a snap of Nessie.
Way to go: The official Loch Ness 2000 Exhibition Centre in Drumnadrochit (01456 450573) is open all year-round (admission £5.95). Cruises on Loch Ness, on the aptly-named Nessie Hunter (more information can be obtained on the exhibition centre number above), operate from April 1 to October 31 and costs £8.
Bermuda Triangle
Take a cruise somewhere between Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico and there's a chance you may slip through the cosmic envelope. As many as 100 ships and planes have reputedly vanished in this area (aka The Devil's Triangle) in the past 150 years, many without a squeak, a distress signal, or even a salvaged life jacket. One celebrated disappearance in 1945 involved five US Navy torpedo bombers as well as the search plane that subsequently went looking for them. In other, equally strange cases, ships have reappeared months after their disappearance minus their crews. Creepy.
Way to go: Set the Triangle a challenge by sailing with Celebrity Cruises (0800 0182525) on a two-week jaunt aboard Century from Miami to Barbados, Cozumel, Key West, Puerto Rico, St Thomas and back to Miami. The cruise, which runs all year round, costs from £1,724 including return flights, overnight in Miami, transfers and all meals on board.
Jerusalem
The extraordinary and miraculous are commonplace in this, the holiest city on earth. A few years ago I met a chap dressed as Herod, playing a harp outside the Dung gate, while the local psychiatric hospital, Kefar Shaul, continues to overflow with "messiahs".
On any day in this holy centre of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, you'll see Filipino pilgrims carrying 8ft crosses to the Chapel of the Flagellation, Jews praying at the Wailing Wall, and muslims praising Allah at the mosque of the Dome of the Rock (where Mohammed ascended to heaven). Follow the Via Dolorosa (The Way of Sorrow) that winds its way through the souk, on the route that Jesus took to his crucifixion via the 14 Stations of the Cross. At its end, don't miss the Ethiopian chapel situated above The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christ was entombed. There are some wonderful paintings of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba here.
Way to go: Before booking flights and/or accommodation, check with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on www.fco.gov.uk for travel advice on Israel.
A three-night Jerusalem break costs from £448 per person with Jordan Freelance (01628 483550). The price includes return scheduled flights from Gatwick, transfers and accommodation with breakfast at the Jerusalem Hotel - a delightful former Turkish villa, close to the Old City.
Vancouver
If the possibility of an extra-terrestrial abduction is high on your list of priorities when it comes to choosing a destination, Vancouver is reputed to be just the place. According to Ann Driffel in How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction, it has witnessed more space snatches - 300 at the last count - than any other city. So it's no wonder that the city spawned the cult TV series, the X-Files. Vancouver's ethereal quality on a misty morning probably reminds the aliens of home. (Given the number of repeat visits they are reported to make, maybe some enterprising Vancouverite should open an alien hotel.)
Way to go: Wing your way to Vancouver with British Airways Holidays (0870 2424243), which will also provide four nights in the mid-range Century Plaza Hotel & Spa from £523 (extra nights from £49 per room). The X-Tour (£15, tel: 604 609 2770 x-tour.com) can provide you with some close encounters of the weird kind.
Stonehenge
The stone circle still has us scratching our heads. What possessed prehistoric man to drag those blocks of sarsen, or sandstone, and bluestone - some up to 25ft in height and 40 tons in weight - to this site near modern-day Salisbury? Is the site an early observatory, a place of ritual sacrifice, a royal palace or an early rave-culture site? We still don't know for certain. What we do know is that Stonehenge, dating back to 3,000BC, remains one of the planet's greatest enigmas and the most important monument of prehistoric Europe.
Way to go: Further information on Stonehenge can be obtained from the English Heritage Office in Amesbury (01980 625 368). The site is open 9.30am-4pm daily, and adult admission is £4.20, children £2.20 and family tickets £10.60. AS Tours (01980 862931) operates full-day guided minibus tours of Stonehenge and Avebury (the epicentre of the crop-circle phenomenon) from £20pp. Private tours are also available.
Easter Island
There are two mysteries surrounding Easter Island. The first is: how did Pacific islanders arrive at the world's most remote inhabited island, which is located 2,200 miles off the west coast of Chile? Secondly, why, when they arrived there after such an exhausting journey, did they decide to carve around 600 colossal sculptures (known as moai) from hard volcanic tuff, transport them vast distances and erect them on large stone platforms?
Way to go: Journey Latin America (020-8747 8315 www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk) is offering tailor-made tours from £1,399 for nine nights, including flights, B&B accommodation, transfers and excursions on Easter Island.
