I am often asked where’s the one place I’ve visited that has totally blown me away and, I have to say, that’s a tough question to answer. I have seen so many wonderful places and each has its own special memories. But in terms of one country where I felt totally privileged to experience its remote isolation, where I got access to a traditional way of life not many people get to see and where I travelled through pristine landscapes, it has to be the Kingdom of Bhutan.

I certainly felt very lucky when I arrived on the island of St Barth.  Firstly, my propeller plane had landed safely after a near vertical dive over mountainous terrain onto the infamous short runway, the wing tip almost touching the turquoise waters of St Jean Bay.  And secondly, I was ticking off a place that had been on my bucket list for a very long time.

Even the 5:30am call to prayer by the muezzin at the nearby mosque didn’t ruin the wonderful feeling of waking up in an exotic location a mere 2½ hour flight from the UK. Grabbing a coffee, I climbed to the rooftop and watched the sun rise over Tangier and the Strait of Gibraltar, where the inky Mediterranean Sea and the azure Atlantic Ocean meet. 

The scene is hypnotic with rhododendron trees in early bloom, their vibrant red flowers contrasting against the snow-capped Himalayan peaks, whilst neon green terraces dotted with tiny villages cascade down vertigo inducing valleys. 

Ask someone to pin Madagascar on a map and there’s a slim chance they’ll manage to locate it.  But, lying some 400km off the east coast of Africa, it is the Indian Ocean’s largest island. Having broken free from the Continent many millions of years ago, it evolved in its own individual way and is one of the most biodiverse countries with, astonishingly, around 80% of its flora and fauna (of which there are around 250,000 species) found nowhere else on earth.

Patagonia is known to be where the world ends.  Or is it where the world starts mused my guide, Dennis, as we sat sheltering from the rain and the 100mph wind that had whipped up as we hiked up Cerro Paine in Chile’s famed Torres del Paine National Park.

Buenos Aires has a lot going for it.  A cosmopolitan and culturally rich city, it combines European influences (it was rebuilt in the early 20th Century and modelled on Paris and Madrid) with true Latin atmosphere and a passion entirely its own.