Escape in a book ... fiction can often create a sense of a place more powerfully than any travel guide. Top of my list is The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswamy (Harper Perennial). The book has been a best seller in its native Egypt and throughout the Arabic world since publication in 2002.

Set in downtown Cairo at the time of the 1990 Gulf War, it reveals modern Egyptian life through the eyes of a diverse range of characters – an aristocratic playboy, a gay newspaper editor, a religious zealot, childhood sweethearts – all of whom live in the same apartment building. Cairo hasn't been so vividly - or sexily - evoked since Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk.

August: Mongolia

On August 1 there will be a total eclipse of the sun, but its shadow will largely fall on a path across the Arctic. Towards the end of the day, however, having crossed Siberia, it will be visible in Mongolia. The country is one of the few true wildernesses left on earth, with terrain including mountains, steppe and semi-desert, and nomadic people still existing in the land of the Khans with the aid of camel, horse and yak.

So it seems appropriate that travel companies will be setting up camps in the Dzungarian Gobi, from which you can view the eclipse while sipping on a refreshing cup of airag - fermented mare's milk.