I’m a big foodie. So I’m as eager as corn kernels on a hot stove to be spending a day learning to cook at the Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons. Le Manoir – for anyone who has been living in Tupperware since 1984 – is Raymond Blanc’s two Michelin starred eaterie and hotel in Oxfordshire. RB (as he’s known locally) is, of course, the author, TV personality and chef.

Le Manoir is in a lovely Cotswold stone mansion – 15th century with later additions- set in the pretty village of Great Milton. Its 32 rooms and suites were created by interior designer Emily no-swags-or-chintzes-Todhunter alongside RB, the self-confessed ‘micro-idiot’ who is involved in every aspect of Le Manoir. There’s a lace-inspired suite with Chinese red colours and carved furnishings; and Blanc de Blanc, which is white-on-white and draws on Versailles.

But forget that for now becauseLe Manoir could be called a garden with a hotel attached. Think horticultural splendours maintained by an army of perfectionist gardeners overseen by a Frenchman with Aesthetic Compulsive Disorder. There are orchards, a Japanese tea garden with a stepping stone path and Oriental tea house, and lawns dotted with bronze sculptures many of which are of R.B’s friends. (Yes, yes, I know most of us settle for photo albums…)

As is the way here, soon it’s time to eat and we have dinner in the conservatory dining room overlooking the gardens. If you’re feeling particularly porky, you can have the ten course Menu Decouverte. A snip at £125, it includes a variety of seasonal delicacies including crab, asparagus, two puddings, petits fours and, presumably, un brancadier – that’s a stretcher-bearer, darling – to carry you to your room afterwards.

There are a lot of people here on An Occasion and an irritating amount of camera activity: think beaming snaps with the waiters across the chocolat fondant. We settle for three courses which are all utterly delicious: garden asparagus with gull’s egg and organic Scottish salmon confit and Cornish lobster and turbot, followed by a cheese trolley groaning under every fromage known to mankind. The service is impeccable: super-attentive, friendly and not obsequious.

Afterwards we repair to Lemongrass, our Orientally-inspired suite with grassy textures, dark woods, tank of tropical fish, and bed on a raised level framed by draped green curtains. It also has a steam room big enough to seat eight people but we settle for two. We sleep very soundly. But fortunately it’s soon time to eat again. This time, the best breakfast I’ve ever had in a hotel – primarily for the quality of ingredients, frompata negra ham to home-made muesli, nuts and berries. (It’s a buffet which, RB reveals later, he spent a year perfecting.)

Then it’s time to hit The Raymond Blanc Cookery School – just a few steps from the manor house – for a 9am start. It opened in 1991 and they now hold courses of one to four days – everything from children’s culinary lessons to Christmas Dinner Party, Bread Making to Fish and Seafood courses. The teaching kitchen – adjacent to those of the restaurant – is a homely Smallbone affair with Gaggenau appliances.

Today we’re doing The Summer Dinner Party, learning in one day how to create a three-course meal using fresh, seasonal produce. There are ten of us, including four chaps – most here on birthday presents. We don white chef’s jackets and grey aprons. (I’m sent to change from sandals because of ‘elf ‘n’ safety. Enclosed toes only for the kitchen). We’re given advice about hand-washing, knives and suchlike, then we’re under starters orders.

Chef Joel Moroney – an engaging, energetic and humorous tutor – takes the class with tutor Steve Lyons. We work in couples and learn eight dishes, including tomato essence risotto, pan-fried sea bream and poached peaches with orangesabayon. (My husband has left, so I’m paired with Carol, a radiographer and mother of six.)

Each recipe has a difficulty rating. Vanilla syrup gets one blob. (Which means it’s easy peasy and takes five minutes standing on your head.) Tomato essence risottowith summer vegetables – two blobs. (Which means it takes 45 minutes and can probably only be cooked if you concentrate hard.)

Each dish is also selected to demonstrate a technique – from glazing to blanching and sponge making. Preparing the slow roast shoulder of lamb helps us with our dry marinating technique; and making the roast red pepper and couscous hones our baking and steaming skills.

There are lots of tips on ingredients. (Things like where to get micro-herbs and organic Welsh lamb.) Tips on cookery skills. (‘The roasting and caramelising of the lamb bones will make a delicious jus.’) Techniques. (‘Roll the stuffed peppers away from you like sushi.’) There’s also lots of scientific information. Tips on equipment. And nutritional tips. If that makes it sound serious, the tone of the course is actually fun.

There’s some hands-on, some demo: perfect amounts of each. I ask everything I ever wanted to know, from de-boning poultry to sharpening knives and how to preserve Moroccan lemons. Plus there’s lots of tasting, each time with a new plastic spoon. ‘One student, er, cooked with his until it melted,’ warns Joel dolefully. Then we have a relaxed lunch in the kitchen, eating what we’ve made: pistou soup, pan-fried sea bream quick-cooked ratatouille, tomato essence risotto and pudding, if you have space.

After lunch, we’re shown around the manicured gardens. The beginnings of a wild mushroom valley – currently a ditch of wood-chippings and don’t-wanna-spore spores, and a watercress ditch. An organic kitchen garden with 70 herbs – including comfrey, sweet cicely and lovage. One with edible woodland flowers. A poly tunnel housing lemon grass and exotic peppers. And a micro-herb garden with red giant mustard, purple sprouting broccoli, tiny sorrel and weeny celery leaves, for decoration and flavouring. Very du jardin a l’assiette.

The day is terribly civilised – with teas, coffees and dainty biscuits at 10.30am; ‘Kitchen Angels’ to wash up; three-course lunch; then tea at 4.30pm. Before leaving, we’re guided round the engine room: the three catering kitchens. We walk past blast chillers, chefs making desserts as Art and award-winning sugar sculptures. Going home pressies are good too. A pan – Raymond Blanc by Anolon – so good I’ve since bought the Company, (well, the set, plus some fantastic and stylish Raymond Blanc Anolon knives.) And a comprehensive recipe file, chef’s whites, framed certificate and our Fraisier cake – a complicated affair that I have no intention of recreating.

The course is worthy of 15 stars. It’s comparatively expensive, but offers value for money. I’ve learned new techniques for doing a three-course dinner while remaining as relaxed as if I were doing boil-in-the-bag. And I’ve since cooked a decent pistou soup and roast red pepper with couscous at home. Just one word of caution. Don’t weigh yourself before and after…

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is one of those places dubbed a ‘hole’. It’s neither particularly old, nor particularly beautiful. But read on because now there’s a reason to visit: the Oyster Bay Hotel. Renovated in 2007, the hotel is particularly beautiful. It’s also one of the coolest overnight stops in Africa for in-transit honeymooners and those who are en-route, whether to the high snows of Kilimanjaro, the coral sands and historical sights of Zanzibar, the Rift Valley or the Serengeti with its annual migration of two million animals.

The Oyster Bay Hotel is a nine-bed villa with shady colonnades and courtyards. It sits on Oyster Bay, next to the embassy residences and overlooking the ocean. Opposite, huge boats line the harbour (harbour duties are low here) and then set off in twos and threes to deter pirates. The hotel’s interior is in keeping with the new African aesthetic: tribal, organic and chic. It has a large, minimalist open-plan space with muted colours and materials that you want to touch (think jute, fur and hemp), plus artefacts that tell a story. There’s a Kudu-horn lamp musical instrument used in ceremonies to communicate with ancestors; interesting lights, such as raw rattan hanging shades and a Buri palm leaf floor lamp; tribal-chief-sized beds, village-sized bathrooms and free-standing baths. ‘Such a cool vibe,’ scribbled Harpers’ editor Lucy Yeomans in the Visitors’ Book.

I was there in transit to meet friends at Lake Tanganyika – the second deepest lake in the world and the world’s longest freshwater lake – where we were picking up a Lady Lori helicopter (East Africa’s numero uno heli company) to fly to the Serengeti. In the meantime it’s only the style-addicted like me who feel content to go to Africa and just revel in a hotel’s interior. So in pursuit of areas beyond my World of Interiors mindset I decided to spend my few spare hours on the island of Zanzibar.

The ferry trip to Zanzibar involved my travelling companion, Maretha Wemtzer, the (endlessly helpful and hospitable) white South African big mama of the Oyster Bay Hotel in lengthy cross-cultural negotiations. There were ten strangers who, offering their assistance, accompanied us from the taxi to the harbour-side ferry booking office. After a small tree’s worth of form-filling, animated chats about ‘Muzungus’ (white people), residents’ rates and charges for tourists and lots of gesticulating and hand-waving, finally a deal was struck: $80 for my return trip and substantially less for Maretha because she’s a resident. We were accompanied on the two and a half hour ride by cheerful Tanzanians and narcoleptic backpackers who slept on the ferry floor.

When you arrive in Zanzibar by sea, you pass the old dhow harbour where outrigger canoes chug up and down in turquoise waters bordered by golden sands. On the shore, there’s the old Arab fort and House of Wonders (a 19th-century ceremonial palace) of Stone Town, a World Heritage Site. The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, has poured development money into Zanzibar. The dollars show immediately on its manicured sea front garden – Forodhani Park – where, on the day we go, someone also happens to be wrapping the trees in red fabric, in readiness for a party. Better than a yellow ribbon round an old oak tree, any day.

We walked through Stone Town, Zanzibar’s old quarter. In Zanzibar, Portuguese rule was followed by that of Omani Arabs. Omani sultans made Zanzibar the seat of their Imamate, and their home. It then became a British protectorate in 1890. Little has changed since the 1850s; Stone Town is a maze of alleyways, mosques, bazaars and high-walled buildings with teak door frames and the Koran’s scripts and symbols: from the lotus (denoting reproductive power) to fish (for fertility). A roadside vendor was selling cane sugar juice and barbecued cassava (like sweet potato.) Around him, a few men sported the traditional kanzu (ankle-length robes) and some women wore bui-bui (black gowns). But the hot fashion item is still the men’s crocheted hat.

We visited artefact shops selling Coca-Cola cans fashioned into toy cars, beaded necklaces and bags and dresses made by women’s communities from kikoi fabric. Zanzibar Gallery, a wondrous book shop sells endless tomes on African art alongside photographs, carvings and textiles. At the fish market there are piles of unidentifiable blue fish, flailing yellow Piscean prototypes and octopuses; the vegetable and spice market has spiky ‘ugly fruit,’ cashews, pungent cloves and cumin – all taken away after purchase in bags made of old newspapers. At lunch we sat in a restaurant overlooking the ocean and ate the delightfully named pilli pilli perch, steamed with lime, chilli and garlic.

Then we took in a little history. The slave trade had existed for centuries before the sultans came to Zanzibar, but not on such a scale. In the mid 19th-century, 30,000 slaves a year were bought to Zanzibar. Some were punished by being buried alive in the walls of houses under construction; others were beaten and fondled lasciviously in the market. We visited the dank and cramped subterranean quarters where slaves were kept before auctions, many dying before the sale. Then we walked around the Cathedral which was built on the site of the old slave market; saw the altar, the location of the old whipping post; and a crucifix, made from the tree under which Livingstone’s heart was gouged out after his death, and buried. It was his belief that his heart er, belonged to Africa.

On our return trip to Dar es Salaam in the evening, the ferry was full. Men in business suits, with polyester ties, Africa-sized status and even bigger smiles, stood port side, getting drenched with spray. And laughing. And laughing. It was a very happy moment.

We arrived back to the Oyster Bay Hotel and a Tanzanian feast of ‘bamia’ (okra), nyanya chungu (white baby aubergine), and spinach. All dishes were cooked in coconut milk and delicious enough to turn even the most ardent cannibal into a vegetarian. For pudding there was hot grilled pineapple drizzled with cashew, butter and honey sauce or passion fruit crème brulee. Maretha, a formidable foodie, has her staff of black men in white tunics cooking up a storm.

I looked around the beautiful and homely room; at the festivity drums, ebony veneer tree-like lamp, cow skin rugs and a gong that’s used to warn villagers against thieves; at the attentive staff and flickering candles. And I listened to the haunting music of African chanting. Dar es Salaam may not be particularly old, nor particularly beautiful. That’s certainly true. But with the re-opening of the Oyster Bay Hotel it would be hard ever to call Dar es Salaam a total hole again.

In the Masai Mara the animals are so used to people that they pose for photos. Find something exciting like a kill, and you’ll have to share the experience with a fleet of four wheel drives. So it’s a pleasure to stay in Ol Seki – a luxury tented camp situated idyllically in the heart of Eastern Koiyaki – on the edges of the Mara. It’s where the animals are timid and humans scarce. At night, guards with poison darts patrol the camp’s perimeters, ready to defend against marauding buffalo and hungry lions; and guests sleep, safe and sound, inside the tents with hot water- bottles.

In the lifting light of the morning, wildebeest herds gather with a dazzle of zebra on the plain, for protection against predators. Thompson gazelle speed away from our jeep, tails moving like high- speed windscreen wipers. With mounting excitement, we come across a troop of baboons and then ten hippos in a pool – bathing, going under water, blowing bubbles and reappearing. We stand inches away on the river bank knowing that if we joined them, they’d bite us in two. Later, from the car, we watch two cheetah brothers carefully washing each other. And why not, after eating a baby hippo?

Ol Seki is a no-bricks, no-mortar, 1920s-style camp. Think 12 sided tents like big tops but filled with contemporary cream sofas, African cushions, ethnic furniture and elephant-sized beds. You can sit on a Colonial plantation chair on the groovy circular decking outside your tent and look over the Savannah to spy elephant. Or shade from the sun under the cream awning, with sundowners or steaming mugs of Kenyan coffee in your hand.

We gather for meals at a communal table in the ‘mess tent,’ its tarpaulin curtains pulled back, our eyes feasting on the plains and animals. The food is excellent by any standards, particularly given that nothing grows locally and everything has to be flown in, in Tintin’s plane. Evans, the chef, appears in whites at breakfast with a portable stove on which, by popular request, he makes chilli omelettes. For dinner, we have the world’s best bloody and Virgin Mary’s followed by modern Colonial fare: asparagus, fillet and fresh passion-fruit sorbet. Afterwards we follow the directions of the Swahili words written in chocolate on the coconut cake, ‘Goodnight, sleep well.’

Ol Seki attracts French women in giraffe-high heels, couples and bonused-out bankers, here to sweat out the credit crunch. People dropped off on the tiny airstrip in one-pilot planes or spirited here in Lady Lori helicopters, Kenya’s finest fleet and known for its celebrity clientele. No wonder they come here: Ol Seki is a place of superlatives and not just for the game drives. Although we go on one drive, and then another and another. Animals and plains as far as the eye can see and just us, our children, and our guides Daniel Koya and Betty Maitai, who are the most knowledgeable I’ve encountered in six safaris.

But when I’m safari-ed out, Ol Seki also appeals to the Guardian in my soul. Rakwa is the local mud village, authentic to its last twig- filled cow hide mattress and fly-crawling child’s face. A brisk 45- minute walk away is the school, Olesere with 270 children and four teachers. There are wooden board classroom walls with gaping holes and wall posters bearing legends like, ‘Water is Life’ and, ‘Sanitation is Dignity’. ‘We used to be caned on the hand and under the feet and then have to walk to school bare foot,’ remembers Betty. ‘Now teachers just hit with a ruler and pinch. No wonder the children don’t behave so well’.

One day we drive to the local Nkoilale village, in the middle of a plain. En route, we pass Masai tribesmen – noble, lithe and carrying spears – walking to market in their red kikoys to scare off lions. In the village, there’s a Mother Teresa Clinic and near it the Empiris Shop, which sells Fanta, loo paper and flour: nothing else. Women with huge earrings, beaded hair and wearing orange, yellow and red garments sit on the ground selling potatoes, maize flour and cabbages. Others sell beads or goats. They perch in front of huge sacks of snuff and piles of second-hand clothes laid out on blankets. Best of all are the ‘1000 mile shoes’, made from tyres that have driven a thousand miles. (If you have a rubber bit sticking up purposefully between your toes, it shows you’re not married. Jimmy Choo take note.)

Afterwards we visit the restaurant, a place with a concrete floor and corrugated roof. It serves only chicken. Then we go to a pub in a breeze-block hut, with a frescoed wall of a tribal scene. Men with spears and knives sit in a line along the wall drinking local maize and barley beer, and spirits straight from the bottle. Afterwards they walk back to their village to stagger into the wrong huts.

These people believe in Enkai, a God who descended from the sky to give them cattle. They do cattle raids on other tribes to reclaim what seems rightfully theirs. For them, cows are moving banks. Indeed Daniel has to give his parents ten cows as a fine for having chosen his own wife. ‘Otherwise they will hate me and put a curse on me,’ he explains. Fresh cow dung is used as an antiseptic by ladies when they’re expanding their ears with huge earrings.

We return to the animals, to another fabulous game drive, and another. We’ve seen some of the Big Five – lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard. We’ve seen many of the Little Five – insects. Now along the dry river bed, a baboon has killed a leopard. Later vultures scavenge over a cow. We see giraffe, zebra, impala, buffalo. Rising dawns and setting suns. Then a huge male lion sits on a rock, surveying his plains. The sound of playing impala fills the air. The lion slides down his rock and walks very slowly towards them…

I’m sped from the airport by a James Bond-style driver dressed all in black. He plays New Age dolphin music, the sort that normally goes with massages and crystals. Is he getting me into the mood for the Sha Wellness Spa, the world’s first five-star macrobiotic spa, on the 50 minute drive from Valencia, Spain? Soon the spa looms like an ocean liner stranded among the Sierra Helada mountains, with the Lego tower blocks of Benidorm in the distance. Outside, one of the first of its endlessly solicitous staff welcomes me with a hot flannel. Then we enter the 28,000 square metres of white marble, water features and calm.

The clinic offers a fusion of Oriental and Western natural therapies, anti-ageing and non-invasive techniques. Sha is based on the ideas of Michio Kushi, a macrobiotics guru who believes that food is the key to health and health the route to peace. It was started by a property developer called Alfredo Bataller Parietti, after he was rid of a tumour and realised the body’s potential for curing itself with a macrobiotic diet and natural therapies.

A macrobiotic diet involves lots of grains, beans, fresh fruit and vegetables and avoids processed foods and animal fats, plus it includes the correct balance of acid and alkaline foods. If it’s good enough for Gwyneth and Madonna, I reason, it should be alright for me. Sort of.

First I’m shown round the spa. There’s a heli pad, chapel, gym, Aqua Lab (for water therapy treatments), Oxygen Bar (with bottles of oxygen to suck from while you’re waiting) and reception area with a display cabinet. Instead of Rolex watches or Dior handbags it contains soba, sea vegetables, nori flakes and spelt grains. Nearby signs indicate that the clinic offers ‘Sleep Medicine’ and ‘Anti-tobacco medicine’. Then I’m led upstairs to my suite (the spa has only suites), a Japanese-style oasis.

Next is a lunch of modern macrobiotic haute cuisine – think Heston Blumenthal with sea-weed (the chef, Pablo Montoro Fernandez trained at El Bulli). The dining room has mother-of-pearl look nightclub walls, a lotus pond, a floor of Arabesque white marble and Japanese dark wood tables. It’s also full of cashmere clad singletons treating their bodies as temples. I’m served lobster and sprouts in what I suspect is mud, followed by little black flying saucers of squid ravioli, then ice-cream decorated with beetroot crisps. The macrobiotic way is to chew each mouthful 54 times: I wonder why they don’t just serve it ready-masticated.

Afterwards, I meet the nurse for a health check in her office. I have dodgy knees (too much competitive running), a touch of eczema and sinusitis (after the flight). But broadly I’m extremely healthy plus caffeine, alcohol and nicotine-free. My aim is simply to lose a few pounds, read Wuthering Heights and go cold turkey on my BlackBerry. The nurse records my blood pressure, weight, lung capacity and fills in a health questionnaire. ‘Headaches, constipation and peeing a lot often happen when you start a macrobiotic diet,’ she warns, before adding that my weight is within normal range.

I’m to follow the spa’s Discovery programme – the price of which includes nurse and macrobiotic doctor consultations, a special diet, daily therapy (shiatsu to massage) and activities from yoga to meditation and talks. My diet will be decided after a consultation with the macrobiotic doctor. I’m anxious that I’m just going to be served minuscule portions of beans.

The next day I see Bill Tara, an American macrobiotic doctor with 45 years’ experience. Using the Oriental diagnosis of Bo-Shin, he considers the colour of my eyes, skin texture and temperature, checks my pulses and diagnoses which organs are under stress (kidneys and adrenal glands, apparently, from overworking). Bill personalises my diet which includes breakfast of miso soup and barley porridge with almond milk plus shitake mushroom tea (a Japanese medicinal tea to help the liver release toxicity) after every meal.

Over the following days, Bill gives great health talks on topics like food and science. At other times, I lie in a flotarium of Dead Sea water with illuminated stars on the ceiling (a waste of time and my head keeps banging against the edge of the pool); have a world-class massage (think magic hands and orange oil); join excellent yoga and pilates classes; and get wet in the Aqua Lab – a brilliant therapeutic water circuit with water beds and jets, pebble bath, caldarium, tepidarium and hydro pool, overgrown taps gushing water to massage your back and a Niagra Falls for pummelling the shoulders.

The rest of my hours are spent on the loo (diuretic, detoxing foods rule OK,) or getting lost looking for loos. Luckily there are four ladies’ lavatories by the restaurant. I’m taken aback when I get a call from reception saying, ‘You must come down for wee’, but it turns out they only want to weigh me.

Recently Bill busted some Sha-ites at the nearby Ben and Jerry’s bar but I follow the programme exactly and, to my surprise, I don’t feel hungry between meals. My Discovery meals are sensible portions of things like carrot soup, beautifully presented vegetables, tofu and barley followed by red fruit jelly. Or leek soup, salmon tartare, quinoa and seaweed then more fruit jelly. I don’t feel bloated afterwards, I have no cravings and feel, if not virtuous, then certainly almost virtuous.

A highlight of the week is a cookery demo with Marlene MacMillan (who spent a week teaching Rupert Everett to cook). Talk amongst the participants is about people who sleep on magnetic beds, how the Japanese don’t even have a word for menopause (because, being macrobiotic, they don’t suffer its effects) and how miso cleanses toxicity from the body. Meanwhile words like ‘shoyu’, ‘tempe’ and ‘daikon’ are bandied, and I learn to make a mean miso soup.

The demo is interrupted for me when I’m called to a colonic irrigation appointment. I had mistakenly thought that the clinic was offering a radical new treatment: a colonic done with coffee. And by this stage, I’m happy to get caffeine into my body any which way but it turns out that it’s just a normal colonic – cappuccinos are only administered via enemas – and simply involves tummy massage and jets of water up your you know what. I watch food that has been chewed less than 54 times leave my body bobbing along water in a clear pipe, and afterwards feel light-headed and less gassy.

To feel any changes and gain scientifically measurable effects, a week is the minimum recommended stay at Sha but I have a good ‘taster’ in four days. If you go for longer, they can do genetic testing to check, for example, if you’re prone to obesity, and monitor things like thyroid function and cholesterol. On my last day the nurse excitedly shows that I’ve lost nearly two percent of my body fat. Then she weighs me. I’ve lost 200 grams. That works out at least £8 a gram. Even at that price, I’d go back again. I’ve learnt 50 things to do with seaweed and I’m keen to make some life changes. I realise I’ve been drawn to the macrobiotic way of thinking when I get on the plane and someone asks, ‘What’s it like in London?’ and the hostess replies, ‘Lots of grain’.

Since my return, I’ve been avoiding wheat, sugar, caffeine, dairy and my cannibalistic tendencies. Plus I had a great follow-up colonic with Caroline Shaw at the Hale Clinic. My Sha experience has left me with sparkling eyes, a glowing complexion and feeling calm. But it has also left me miserable. Now everyone tells me that that’s because I’m detoxing…

I’m throwing up like an elephant, puking saline water in one enormous wave. I’ve just swallowed a litre and a half of tepid, salty water – drinking several glasses very fast under the unwavering watch of my yoga teacher, Sandeep Aggarwal. At his instruction, I’ve tickled the back of my throat with my fingers, before belching more liquid into the sink. As I do this, an elegant woman in a sari walks past the open door of the therapy room and smiles encouragingly. ‘You’re a natural,’ Sandeep enthuses simultaneously, watching me chuck up. There are few things more curious than forcibly evacuating the stomach in public, on purpose and being congratulated for it. ‘Not many Westerners ask to do vomiting,’ adds Sandeep. I cannot think why.

I’m on the new Yogic Detox programme at Ananda in the Himalayas. The week-long programme includes: different Hatha yogic techniques for cleansing internal organs (known as Shatkriya); yogic postures (asana); breathing techniques (pranayama); meditation; and an Ayurvedic diet (based on the ancient medical system). The aim is to balance our three doshas (think constitution). If you want to get technical, there’s Kapha (which relates to mucous and is connected with being reliable), Pitta (think bile and fiery) and Vata (which denotes wind and indicates fast-moving personalities). Imbalances are believed to result in disease and illnesses.

If throwing up sounds crazy, mostly the treatments are wonderful – and they take place in one of the world’s loveliest destination spas. Ananda is in a stupendous location, overlooking the Ganges and set in the Maharaja of Tehri Garhwal’s palace estate near Rishikesh, India. There’s the Maharaja’s private summer palace, a restored Viceroy’s Palace (with its museum-like Vice-Regal suite where Mountbatten stayed) and comfortable modern accommodation. Then there’s the spa the size of an Indian state which has won more awards than most Hindus have had past lives. It’s vibrates to the sound of chants of Om and Indian flute music; there are Ganesh statues with marigold garland necklaces and rose petals floating in bowls.

But back to the vomiting. The aim of Kunjal (as voluntary regurgitation is known) is to cleanse the stomach, oesophagus, throat, lungs and chest. (You have to do it early in the morning, on an empty stomach and after ‘finishing nature’s call’.) It’s said to wash out strong acid and excess mucous and, in yogic therapy, it plays a key role in alleviating asthma and preventing ulcers. Yogis have practised these techniques for centuries. The idea is that sneezing, defecating, crying, sweating – you name it – are very cleansing. (‘You should try to be positive and relaxed, to feel that you are doing it for your own purification,’ explains Sandeep.) Just as a sauna or scrubbing the skin helps the skin to breathe better, so flushing helps the digestion and is said to make it work better. It takes me ten minutes to chuck up – a pro can do it in three – and, frankly, leaves me feeling rather grotty.

Now it’s time for my Jal Neti treatment, which is a way of cleansing the nostrils with warm salty water. It’s a practice aimed to alleviate sinusitis, bronchitis, hay fever and negative thinking. Great if you’re prone to coughs and colds. The technique involves filling a doll’s house sized tea-pot with another brew of warm saline solution, tilting my head, popping the spout up one nostril and pouring. The water goes up one nasal cavity and comes out of the other nostril, first in a drip and then in a steady stream. I keep my mouth open and the effect is like choking on the Indian Ocean. Afterwards my sinuses are born-again and I feel delightfully light and clear-headed.

Another important part of the Ananda cleansing programme is the diet. It’s prescribed by their Ayurvedic doctor Dr Adarash, for clients’ specific doshas. I’m diagnosed as Pitta Vata and told to avoid sour and spicy food, overeating, pickles, sour cream and vinegar. We start our meals with a nasty cup of hot water sprinkled with spices and a tiny glass of detoxifying juice with herbs and rock salt. ‘Keep enjoying,’ insists Akshay, the head chef cheerily. The dishes are small and inventive. Think Indian cottage cheese (paneer) kebabs with cous cous (231 calories) or spiced bitter gourd with yellow lentil stew (221 calories) and sugar-free apple cinnamon pieces with home-made vanilla ice cream (129 calories). There are also international Ayurvedic dishes, aimed at helping people replicate the food at home. It’s not my favourite food but I don’t feel hungry or tired after meals. I get a detox headache on day three – as does everyone in my party – but don’t feel any cravings between meals.

There are superb therapies to facilitate further detoxing. The Ayurvedic ones start with a spiritual ritual: foot cleansing in a bowl with Ganges pebbles and the chanting of an Ayurvedic prayer, a supplication to Guru the creator, sustainer and destroyer. They range from Abhyanga (a traditional four-handed synchronised massage on a wooden Ayurvedic massage bed and with sesame oil, which leaves me smelling like a frying pan) to Choornaswedana, a dreamy massage with dosha specific oils and warmed herbal poultices, Shirodhara (where luke-warm herbal oil is poured from a dangling brass bowl in a stream onto the forehead) to Indian head massage, which eliminates toxins and stimulates circulation.

Ananda is in a place of pilgrimage said to be the birthplace of yoga, meditation and Ayurveda, so it’s fitting that we practise yoga daily in the amphitheatre outside as the sun rises and peacocks wander past. Toe Bending, Half Butterfly (‘place one foot on top of the opposite. Hold the toes…’) The Cat Stretch pose, the Cobra, the Snake and the Crocodile; each day I become more supple. Additionally I have private Pranayama lessons which teach me to breathe properly and my yoga instructor works with me on my psychic energy centres – but I fall asleep.

It’s possible to escape to the palace for cream teas, scrabble, billiards on a 100 year-old table, classical music and bagpipes. Alternatively there are activities that are more strenuous and with a spiritual twist. One day we walk through villages with tethered goats and past fields of yellow mustard, through the mist to the nearby Kunjapuri temple, a holy shrine dedicated to the Goddess Sati. There’s a climb of 306 steps to reach the temple, but who’s counting? Once there we’re given bindi markings on our foreheads, red ‘kalawa’ temple bracelets (to represent God) and blessings.

Another day we trek nearly three hours to Rishikesh, through the fluorescent green landscape, past a lurid snake, monkeys and smiling kids requesting: ‘you have chocolate, please Auntie?’ We sit on the banks of the Ganges for the daily evening Aarati ceremony, an auspicious Hindu ritual performed at Parmarth Niketan Ashram. Small, symbolic lamps are lit while the local orphans chant mantras and a Bollywood-style priest looks on ethereally as his Guru sprinkles the holy riverside fire with herbs and ghee to purify the environment.

What makes Ananda so special though, are the endlessly helpful staff who have a way of anticipating everyone’s needs before we’ve even thought of them. After the exertions of our Rishikesh trek, unrequested, someone runs soothing baths with herb poultices and lemon verbena leaves for our party. They genuinely want to make everything wonderful for their guests. I fall asleep at 9.30 pm every night and aside from waking several times – who wouldn’t on the gallons of fresh ginger and lemon tea we drink? – I sleep soundly. Nobody ventures out of their kurta pyjamas all week except perhaps to put on a shahtoosh.

I leave floating on a spiritual cloud feeling calm, happy, wise, and with luminescent skin, having lost a few pounds and with my sinuses and (supposedly) chakras cleared. Perhaps the excellent treatments achieve the spectacular results. Maybe it’s the clean air, peace, beautiful location or my vegetarian diet. Throw into the mix too the sunken bathtub overlooking the valley, the Kneipe foot bath (where you walk on stones to improve your circulation) and sauna overlooking the jungle views and Ganges. And the fact that the air is cool and there are no crowds. Whatever, I reap great benefits from the Yogic Detox programme although I’m glad it isn’t an extreme package. After all, Ananda offer oil enemas and Nasyam (where medicated oil is poured into the nostrils) but thankfully they don’t offer the variation of Jal Neti called Sutra Neti, where a fine thread is taken inside one nostril and pulled out of the mouth through the throat. And I won’t be vomiting again in public…

North Norfolk has become the Martha’s Vineyard of East Anglia. Who needs the summer retreat for New England Brahmins when we have windy coast roads, mudflats and sanddunes? And Burnham Market. Now to outstrip anything they offer on Long Island, there’s even a blockbuster exhibition, Houghton Revisited, at Houghton Hall near King’s Lynn. It boasts works by Poussin, Rubens and Van Dyck.

The 7th Marquess of Cholmondley, has secured 70 masterpieces by Rembrandt and Velazquez back from Russia to exhibit in their original home, his family seat of Houghton Hall. (May 17th to September 29th.) The masterpieces were collected by Lord Cholmondley’s ancestor – Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole. They were then sold scandalously – to pay debts – in 1779 to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, for the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

You should hire/buy/steal a Bentley to get to Houghton. They’re one of the sponsors of the exhibition, and I drove a Mulsanne there.

It’s almost impossible to fault the motor – it steers like a dream, has suspension as good as any bed, acres of leather interiors and detail that’s beyond perfect. (Heated door mirrors, doors that close ultra quietly, more seat positions than the Kama Sutra.) It also attracts a lot of attention.

But back to Houghton Revisited. Sir Robert Walpole amassed a collection of Old Masters in the 1720s and built Houghton specifically to house them. It’s the grandest of Palladian stately homes with a near -perfect interior by William Kent, the brilliant 18th century designer and architect. So it’s an exhibition definitely worth seeing. There’s also a contemporary sculpture park there – with works by James Turrell and Richard Long; an award-winning five-acre walled garden; and 4000 acres, including a deer park.

If you want to explore further you can also go to Holkham Hall where Viscount Coke lives with his family. Here you’ll find another walled garden, an alabaster hall, classical statuary and yet more Van Dyck and Rubens. (‘It is the perfect English house from the Golden Age of the Grand Tour.’ Simon Jenkins.) It’s definitely worth a visit.

The coastline of north Norfolk is the stuff of dreams. So take a brisk walk to Holkham beach which is privately owned by the estate – and is the sort of beach you’d find in Cape Cod. You can walks along its four soft, golden, sand- miles, with its saltwater lagoons framed by pinewoods.

WHERE TO STAY.

There’s plenty happening in Norfolk. The Victoria just re-opened (in May) after being refurbished. All the Rajisthani furniture gone and it has been relaunched as a traditional English country inn by the Estate. But it (still) has 10 comfortable rooms with artefacts from the attics and basement of Holkham, and what they call ‘drench’ showers.

That the restaurant has two rosettes may not attract everyone – but venison, beef and game come from the Holkham Estate . (Crabs from Cromer, mussels from Brancaster, cheeses from the nearby village of Wighton. ) Traditional classic French food is their speciality. It’s by the north gate entrance to Holkham Hall and 10 minutes by foot ( there are dog-friendly rooms) to the beach – so a great location (although you’re a minute’s walk from day trippers and the car park for the beach).

The Hoste is considered the best boutique pub. (A 17th century bar where supposedly Lord Nelson drank. ) Its décor is the higher end of dainty Peter Jones- style four- poster beds and freestanding baths – but it’s known locally for its good food,and good rooms . Its new (since 2012) owners have a host of other hotels, six in total, including a railway house and Vine House – a Georgian boutique hotel with French furnishings, a Mr & Mrs Smith favourite. Owners, Brendan and Bea Hopkins – Norfolk folk for 20years – created a buzz when spending £2 million on improving their empire. Pleasingly the Hoste is in the centre of Burnham Market with its Georgian buildings and village green.

The Lowes on the 1800 -acre Kelling Estate offer self -catering in converted farm buildings. It’s a hamlet of 11 period farmers’ flint and brick and barns. On arrival, you’re greeted by homegrown flowers, welcome logs and foods and Vicky, the cheery property manager. London interior decorator Emma Deterding (daughter- in- law of the previous owner of the estate) has done a stylish job – underfloor heating, cream carpets, contemporary fittings. A communal swimming pool, jumbo trampoline and tennis courts make it child -friendly. And doggie bedding makes it dog -friendly.

It’s Swallows and Amazons meets London – there’s even a studio on the estate for pilates, yoga and belly dancing – and it’s just two miles from the sea.

If you want a one-off experience with friends and family, there’s little to beat Voewood – a unique Arts and Crafts home with 14 bedrooms, accommodation for 34 and a Hall that fits 100. It’s eclectic, idiosyncractic and sometimes zany – with each room with a different look, including Fifties, Bloomsbury and Seventies. You’ll either love or hate the Klimt-style shimmery wallpaper, disco ball and dormitory of 7 singles.

Forget it if you want staff/service or an en suite – there’s outside catering and a mere 7 baths here. It’s also a bit spooky. Additionally its owner, antiquarian bookdealer and professional charmer, Simon Finch, lives in a wing, like a latter day Miss Havisham; but instead of a wedding dress, he wears a suit that looks like pyjamas. But it’s set delightfully among woodland and landscape gardens – including sunken gardens and a Grade 1 listed walled garden planted with persimmons, greengages and grape vines. And don’t miss it in August (24th to 27th) when there’s the Voewood Festival (literary, food, arts).

WHERE TO EAT.

Creake Abbey Café and Food Hall (opened April) in north Creake. It’s set amid watermeadows. The man behind it is Stephen Harrison – ex uni lecturer turned Borough Food Market man. Ali Yetman is head chef – she proved her culinary talent at the Wiverton Café in Holkham – and uses Creake Abbey Farmers’ Market as her larder. So you can’t go wrong.

It offers local artisan and organic food : try the pork pie with chilli jam or ( in season) Sharrington asparagus. Its butchery sells rare breed pork and the best of British cheeses. In the café, try pan -fried smoked haddock fish-cake with chilli jam, green salad and remoulade.

The Wiveton Farm Café is another must with its walled- kitchen- garden –to- plate homemade food. Inside the café is all nursery pink and turquoise; al fresco you’re surrounded by raspberry canes and strawberry fields overlooking the sea. Afterwards you can feast on the sweetest of PYO raspberries.

You can drive to Wells to have fish and chips on the pier or, even better, in the back of your Bentley. And, further along the coast, don’t miss just-caught lobster (£14), crab (£5) and local samphire at Cookie’s Crab Shop, Salthouse – a beach shack. Or buy fresh fish there and take it home. If you want DIY food, the Cley Smokehouse is superb.Its salmon fillet – traditionally hot roasted in an oak fired kiln – is succulent, smokey and superlative.

What else to do? You’re in North Norfolk to love the blustery weather with sea gulls hovering overhead and yellow broom waving in the salty air; to visit lots of churches – pilgrimage to Walsingham, and to breathe in the wildness of wind- lashed shores. You should definitely take a boat to Blakeney Point nature reserve .The baby seals will pop up inquisitively beside your boat and you’ll probably see a colony of grey seals lolling on the beach. (There are around 500 seals there.) Afterwards enjoy the marshes and boats bobbing beneath vast painterly skies by the tiny fishing village of Blakeney.

There’s also wildlife and nature at Pensthorpe in the Wenslun Valley – former gravel pits turned nature trails. Do visit if you like woodland walks, pond dipping and bird watching.

You don’t need to be a twitcher to visit Cley Marshes, a wildfowl haven.There’s a lovely walk on its wooden walkway among dense reedbeds, and you can relax in the hide overlooking pools and scrapes and saline lagoons, watching feathered happenings. The view from the visitor centre across the Marsh to the sea is magnificent.

At the end of it all, you can spend the evening with a Yetman’s beer – handmade in Norfolk’s one-man brewery – in front of a cracking log fire. Drink capuccinos in the smart Georgian town of Holt or walk by Jacobean flint faced houses. Then pop into your Mulsanne, breathe in the leather and veneer, press a button to set your seat vibrating and massaging…..and race back to town. The Hamptons are overcrowded and expensive. Who needs that when there’s North Norfolk up the road?

It appeals to me when I arrive at Grayshott Spa and know from the minute I walk into the entrance hall that I can wear a white robe from now on. ‘You don’t have to worry about labels on your tracksuit or whether you have the correct evening clothes. Just bring trackies and robust walking boots’, was all Vicki Edgson, nutritionist, global spa retreat leader and health consultant, had insisted. ‘The rest of the time, you probably won’t even get out of your dressing gown’. And yes, there is a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest aspect to the grande dame of spas with its fifty-somethings padding around in slippers and white robes.

Grayshott is under an hour from London and suddenly I am in utter peace and tranquillity and the former country seat of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Welcome to Comfort Central with Surrey bourgeois décor trying to go modern, gigantic double beds (or two in one football-stadium-sized room), lots of candles, an apple orchard, sauna and comforting middle-aged matrons in white coats.

There’s a cigar room turned bar with a water menu from around the world (and wine); and a billiards room that has morphed into a cinema with pink walls, where they also hold lectures on everything from how to dress to life coaching.

I’m here for a ‘Vital Health – Weight Management’ retreat with Vicki. It’s normally a seven-day retreat, but I plan to do it in two and a half days (but only because I’m on a press trip that doesn’t last longer). Vicki starts from the position that people eat too much and of the wrong things and at the wrong times of the day, which is hardly reinventing the wheel. But this turns out to be not your bog-standard detoxing retreat. She looks at key factors essential for long-lasting, sustainable, empowering energy – known as the Vital Force in Eastern Medicine.

There are eight of us, including two women who have done an extreme diet and lost seven stone between them. We start our retreat in the traditional dining room with a group chat over a plated supper that wouldn’t stretch the stomach of a Chihuahua dog. There’s no going back for seconds; in fact, adding pepper would probably tip the balance into what’s considered over-eating here.

But the food is healthy and terribly good (think grilled fish and saffron gnocchi) and all the better for being eaten after a digestive enzyme tablet, apparently. Plus the accompanying basil water has anti-bacterial qualities. ‘Would you like water or water?’ asks the waitress, offering herb-infused aqua or Grayshott’s own brand. ‘You should be running to the loo every half hour,’ warns Vicki, cheerily.

Vicki tells us that the next few days will be filled with plenty of outdoor cardiovascular exercise, gym circuit class, fresh air, sleep and treatments to help to ‘up-regulate the metabolism,’ (nutritionist speak for fat-burning.) This is to be interspersed with stuff to calm the nerves – mind-relaxing T’ai Chi, Chi Gung, yoga and suchlike – to prepare us for ‘proper, restorative’ sleep.

In between, we will be meeting for three meals a day – breakfast being the largest, lunch being of the help yourself variety, (don’t get excited: they give you a teeny Grayshott plate with coloured stripes denoting how much each of protein, carbs and greens you can have,) and supper the lightest, (think a palm-sized portion).

We will also be knocking back our body fluid ratio in herbal teas: cayenne pepper and lemon in the morning to stimulate liver and cleansing; turmeric (if you want something that tastes like a half-washed take-away curry container); Japanese Hojicha tea for balancing the stress hormones (known as an adaptogen, as needed by the adrenal glands); and Harmonise tea instead of Mogadon.

We are up early for a racy walk around what feels like most of the 700 autumnal acres of National Trust land that backs onto Grayshott’s 47 acres. It’s exhilarating. Then there’s a jam-packed schedule. It’s not faddish, essentially English and does what matters incredibly well. The therapists are unrivalled (one was a masseur here for 40 years; and most of them have worked here for more than 20 years) and the treatments range from beautifying treats to Hopi Ear Candling and food intolerance analysis. But we follow Vicki’s directives when it comes to treatments; when it comes to everything, in fact.

I have a Body Composition Analysis with Ravi (a personal trainer and International and World Cup hockey player) who promises I’ll get taller afterwards (it’s something to do with tightening my muscles, if I remember correctly). He measures my water, protein, fat and mineral content. Then I have an Oriental Wisdom with Catherine which is unique to Grayshott and one of the best massages I’ve ever had. It incorporates Tui-na massage, Shiatsu, oils with Chinese herbs and a bit of magic.

There’s my back massage with Pam from Bradford who delights me as much with her talents honed over decades as her tales of when she was a Young Communist. And the body scrub where I’m slavered in algae and wrapped in plastic like a demented fish roll. We also do a walking mediation, wandering the beautiful grounds together in silence. ‘I don’t mind if you hug a tree,’ laughs our guide Faye, who oozes spirituality and has worked in hospices. It’s the staff who make Grayshot: they’re friendly, helpful and make me feel so mothered.

We spend much of our time with Vicki, a friendly hurricane with boundless energy and a TV presenter’s presentation. She’s also a numero uno exhibit of the glow, pert bum and cheery disposition that comes from fitness, good food and a positive attitude to life. ‘We all have a choice about our own wellbeing,’ she says. Later she asks us to think about what we’d do if we had two hours to ourselves every day. It may be boring that I say I’d like to read but it makes me decide to implement changes in my life.

Over our time together, Vicki proves that eating more slowly, (she terms this ‘conscious eating’ but really it’s masticating and not nearly as much fun as it’s semiotic cousin); selecting the right balance of foods for each individual (she suggests I miss out sugar and caffeine); and addressing eating issues, (show me a woman who doesn’t have any, and I’ll show you a liar) are key to changing our attitude to our appearance and weight. Each of us in the group has specific difficulties that need to be addressed, and Vicki works with forensic focus to ensure that we all have our own plan by the time we leave. Mine includes vitamin recommendations and a visit to Dr Marion Gluck, London’s hormonal health guru and one of the country’s leading holistic doctors.

The group dynamic is vital for the success of this type of retreat. ‘You may not want to sit down to yet another meal with everyone here every day,’ says Vicki. But, surprisingly, eating together is a hoot. Even more surprisingly I feel full after the food that we’re given. We learn a lot about nutrition and listening to other women’s problems around their food habits and addictions is enlightening. ‘It’s a sharing and caring atmosphere, with much laughter and empathy, isn’t it?’ says Vicki. I leave with a smile on my lips, a bounce in my step, a little less lardy and feeling totally refreshed. Even my lingering cold stays behind in Surrey.

We fly from Nairobi in a plane that is one up from that used by Le Petit Prince, land at the one-strip airport with a thatched shed waiting-room, then take a speedboat past timeless fishing villages and mangrove swamps. Welcome to Lamu, a remote island off the coast of Kenya. The downside is the journey. But the upside is that there’s no jet-lag: it’s only three hours ahead of GMT. It’s also where the hip crowd goes. Think Tracey Emin, Sting and make-up artist to the stars, Mary Greenwell.

The lure of Lamu becomes immediately apparent if you stay in Jahazi, a Swahili-style house on a deserted beach about 25 minutes by boat from mainland Kenya at the southernmost tip of the island. You’re welcomed at the water’s edge by five staff – includingyour own boat captain and private chef – all wearing white shorts and Africa-sized smiles. With its private pool, fabulous baraza (meeting area), five colonial Swahili-style bedrooms and view of the Indian Ocean, many guests feel inclined simply to remain supine. (‘I hope for a massive storm so that we have to stay longer,’ scribbled Ewan McGregor in the visitors’ book.)

Jahazi is one of only six Kizingoni Beach Houses built next to what must be the longest stretch of deserted beach in the universe and surrounded by sand dunes. A few steps away from the ocean, the houses are built of coral block and plastered in the local limestone, with palm-thatched roofs, terraces overlooking the ocean, limestone floors tinted a soft ochre yellow and al fresco bathrooms beneath starry African skies (think also Swahili carved wooden door frames, colonial Swahili furniture and palm-leaf Ali Baba lampshades).

All you have to do here is move from one bed to another: from opium beds with big bolsters and oversized raw silk cushions to ones built onniru (plasterwork) bases, hammocks swinging in the breeze, romantic mozzie-net-draped four-posters, traditional Lamu day beds and kikoi-strewn beds swinging from coconut fibre ropes and overlooking the gardens. You wake up to alarm calls from tropical birds and to waves crashing on the white sand.

It’s compelling to spend days just flicking through magazines and eating the day’s catch and coconut rice, served on the terrace overlooking the ocean by the barefoot butler with the mega-watt smile. But Leslie Duckworth, known locally as the Duchess of Fixit, has other ideas for us. Probably the person who put Lamu so fashionably on the map, the Duchess is one of that peculiarly Kenyan breed of indefatigable entrepreneur. She knows le tout Afrique, manages the Kizingoni Beach Houses and has decorated them stylishly, writes books on African medicinal plants, buys and sells houses, is involved in the Lamu women’s community projects, has a shop in Nairobi…

She insists we stir ourselves and walk the few steps to the beach as night falls and the sky fills with stars. There we find a table set, Savoy-style, with a linen cloth and crockery, and at which we sit alone on a beach under the endless African sky eating succulent barbecued prawns and skewered crayfish followed by delicate passion fruit sorbet served by our butler. (Nets laden with fish from snapper to tuna are delivered daily to the beach.) Then Samburu warriors appear suddenly wearing vivid fabrics and bead and feather headdresses, and do frenetic and primitive tribal dances. There’s no sense that they’ve done this a million times before for tourists, because they haven’t.

The more energetic visitors can water-ski (a speedboat and boatman come with the house), donut, snorkel and swim the channel between the house and the mainland. (‘Amazing,’ concluded Sienna Miller in the guest book. ‘Swam with dolphins TWICE.’) Or you can get up at 6am and – accompanied by Samburu to deter the occasional petty thief; there is virtually no violent crime on the island – walk for around three hours in the cool of the early morning. (The less fit can go by donkey or camel.) As the sun moves up the sky, you stride through the sand eight miles to Shela, the Notting Hill of Lamu, along a beach where sea turtles lay eggs at full moon and thousands of teeny pink crabs scuttle sideways into the water. We pass only a goat, a stray dog and wandering cattle and, closer to civilisation, some donkeys with straw panniers being filled with stones and a Moses-style figure wading through the water, hauling a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk and carrying a live goat and a cow.

Finally we arrive in Shela. This is where you can sit on cushions in the famous Sixties Peponi Hotel to have a feast of fish in coconut off big brass trays; eat on the terrace while gazing at the dhows sailing past; or lounge at the bar – the centre of the world out here and the only place in Shella serving alcohol – where rastas and Euros in leopard-print bikinis share Tusker beers with royalty. I sit on the terrace feeling mightily smug at having covered my eight miles so fast. I drink steaming cups of coffee, eat fresh exotic fruits and gaze longingly across the water at the Robinson Crusoe home of the tribal-inspired jewellery designer, Carolyn Roumeguere (Julian Sands, Nicole Kidman and Donna Karan are fans).

And then it’s off to look at Shela. It’s clean, gentrified and quaint. A place less spoilt and cheaper than the Caribbean. A place where women wear sequinned kaftans and cheery sarongs. There’s only one bar and one restaurant; it’ll never be St Tropez, thankfully. But it is the place to buy former dilapidated Swahili houses, most now fashionably renovated. Go and see a few with Englishman Andrew McGhie who started Lamu Island Property – the island’s first real estate agency – and climb their stairs and look over makuti thatched roofs at the biblical scene. A delightful and engaging man, Andrew will spirit you into Arab houses built of coral and limestone and Swahili houses with mangrove and coconut roofs. ‘The island has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 100,’ he says.

If you just want to rent a house for your holiday, try El Yafir, just moments away from Peponi. It’s the stylish house of Mary Greenwell,- who counts Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightly and Kate Moss among her clients. Mary bought a plot five years ago in Shela. Inspired by the island’s Islamic traditions, she designed her beautiful petit palais with the help of architect Claudio Modola. It has niru floors, Swahili doors and furniture designed by Mary and fashioned by traditional craftsmen in local woodwork shops where artisans make intricate mahogany carved door-frames and bed-heads.

A vast Rajasthani front door leads into a cool hall with a fountain and font with bougainvillea petals floating in it. If there is such a thing as romantic church style, then this is it, with its arches, pillars, hanging glass lanterns and ecclesiastical-style windows. There are an abundance of places in which to lie and daydream: delightful alcoves containing day beds, four posters swathed in muslin, Moorish-style sunken baths and a fairy-tale terrace with urns of bougainvillea, cascading flowers and fringed with cream curtains fluttering in the breeze. There seem also to be endless smiling staff bringing endless plates of endless deliciousness, and they all come with the house when you rent it.

If you’re lucky (and Lamu is that kind of place) Andrew or Mary may introduce you to Eric and Christina Zeller – who live about ten donkey paces away from El Yafir. If so, go and be nosey in their home, Lulu Y Shella (Pearl of Shella), the spacious Fifties house built by casting director Bonni Allen. Now lived in by Eric, an interior and furniture designer and architect, and Christina, the über-stylish accessories designer for Givenchy, their house with its fusion of European and African idioms bears many of his deft touches combined with her aesthetic stamp. Between them they’ve come up with an eclectic mixture of cool features: from Arabic words as murals on the white plaster walls (‘we hoped it was going to be a lovely poem,’ laughs Christina, ‘but it turns out it’s just the opening times of the local museum’), to a stunning Eric-designed driftwood table that stretches almost to the mainland.

If you fancy travelling further back in time, jump in a boat and bounce over the waves a few minutes to Lamu town, a place so remote it has been spared modernisation and civilisation as we know it. Lamu is Kenya’s oldest town, a bustling port and Unesco World Heritage site with 72,000 inhabitants, 25,000 donkeys and one donkey sanctuary (opened by two Englishwomen, natch.) It has just one car (which belongs to the District Commissioner), one road (too narrow to turn; if the DC forgets something he has to reverse home), and 28 mosques for its mostly Muslim population.

Here you find women in traditional black bui buis and men in white kanzu robes wandering along tiny, winding alleyways, some only three feet wide. And there’s a throbbing market whose vendors, seated on the ground, sell sweet potatoes and papayas outside the 19th-century fort – once a prison and now housing a cyber cafe.

Originally a 14th-century Swahili sea trader settlement trading ivory, leopard skins, rhino horn and, later, slaves, it has an alluring mixture of Arab, Portuguese, Turkish, Omani and British influences from its erstwhile settlers: the Turks with their glassware and the Omanis with their art and arches. From the 9th century dhows have arrived in Lamu on the Kaskazi wind from the east with perfume, sugar and silk. Lamu is redolent of that history and going into the charming port-side museum is little different from standing in the street.

There’s fine Swahili architecture (including 16th-century houses) and many 19th-century mansions – high, austere, windowless homes hiding airy courtyards pungent with jasmine and delightful, hidden cool spaces with carved doors, intricate coral work, plasterwork niches and, possibly even antique hardwood furniture inlaid with bone. You can see all this and more with Andrew McGhie, if you’re looking to buy. (It’ll cost a snip of what anything as beautiful would cost nearer home; contact him on +254 (0)720 859 599, www.lamuislandproperty.com).

Lamu is known for attracting the ‘gyp set’: artists, eccentrics, escapists, dreamers, weirdos and romantics (once it was the African version of Kathmandu, a paradise for backpackers in search of alternative realities). It’s far from Kenya’s mainland political instability and election violence. There are no perilous roads, no traffic jams, no television and, thankfully, a lousy internet signal. Just dhow racing, henna painting competitions, donkey racing and er, competitions for who has the most healthy donkey (the prize for a robust donkey? A mobile phone).

It’s a place where time is measured in sunsets and you feel free and supremely relaxed; where you’re in touch with the vast African sky, nature and the rhythms of life. Where there are dhows in full sail and donkeys laden with panniers of coral rock. Where there are exotic days filled with lime sodas, sea breezes and ever-smiling people.

As long as you remember to keep slapping on the factor Ten Zillion suncream (it’s two degrees south of the Equator) and popping the horrid anti-malarial pills, if you must (although, being an island, there are virtually no cases of the disease,) there’s no downside. We bounce back along the waves to our Kizingoni Beach House, a smile on my face, another in my heart. Yes, it certainly out-paradises the competition.

Kizingoni Beach Houses from £1,965 per person based on four couples sharing a house for seven nights on a fully inclusive basis, including flights and transfers and airport taxes. For more information or to book, call Scott Dunn on 020 8682 5070;www.scottdunn.com. E-mail africa@scottdunn.com or info@kizingoni.com.
Virgin Atlantic flies Heathrow to Nairobi daily. Fares from £379. Book on: 08448 747 747; www.virginatlantic.com.

To hire Mary Greenwell’s house, contact Babu British: 00 254 7358 02340; babubritish@yahoo.com. High season prices: December, January, August – $400 for the master bedroom, and $50 for each extra person using the other two bedrooms per night. February and March: $300 for the master bedroom, and $50 for each extra person. Rest of year: $250 for master bedroom and $50 for each extra person. Price includes transfers, private chef and house boys. Food and beverages extra. Menus can be discussed on a daily basis with the chef.

Picture a sandstone building shimmering like a mirage. Perhaps something out of Lawrence of Arabia – or maybe a creamy Moroccan fort. Then imagine honey-coloured alleyways, a piazza and a church – just built but looking as if they’ve been there for centuries. Now envisage, if you will, 93 townhouses in the style of traditional Apulian hill villages. And finally add to the mix some large villas – grand-ish residences encircled with dry stonewalls and cacti – on the outskirts of the town.

Fill the air with the scent of figs and oregano and conjure in your mind’s eye a private estate with vines growing alongside fields bursting with cherry tomatoes and aubergines. Then you have an idea of Borgo Egnazia, Italy’s smartest new offering. Most of it opened at the beginning of the year.

Borgo Egnazia is a resort in Puglia – in the stiletto heel of Italy – and a feat of vision and design. It’s a place that has opened to oohs and ahs; a venue snapped up for French Vogue fashion shoots; and to which photographers from Architectural Digest Italia and suchlike have been hotfooting it. It’s rather like a film set – with extras wafting past in Alberta Ferretti and Pucci.

It ‘s a borgo (Italian for village) and comprises La Corte – a masseria-style hotel – plus the aforementioned townhouses, villas, pools too numerous to count and a fantabulous children’s club. Its design speaks of the rural architecture of the nearby hill villages with their Greek, Goth, Norman and Spanish influences – the legacy of Puglia’s invaders.

We go inside to find a cream-on-cream minimalist dream and wow! contemporary take on the farmhouse look. There are huge tufo pots of grain (‘pile’ as they’re known,) baskets of almonds and a massive sculpture of hanging birdcages. Then there’s Vair, its spa with Roman baths – including a Tepidarium, Calidarium and Frigidarium and therapists who float around in togas and offer locally -inspired therapies.

We stay in a very comfortable 3 -bedroom villa, enjoying our own space, attentive service and a private pool. It costs 10,000 Euros a week. It’s unusual in a new villa that costs that much for the shower to drip through the kitchen ceiling and the bedroom door handle to come off in your hand. But the Chief of Maintenance – he’s included in the price – deals with these minor issues. After all this is a paradiso where they pride themselves on attention to detail.

The one thing that is faultless and beyond compare is the food. A god among culinary men is Mario Musoni, Borgo Egnazia’s Michelin-starred Executive Chef. He’s a big noise in the Slow Food movement, believes in zero food miles and takes the organic produce for his dishes from the 250-acre estate surrounding his kitchens at Borgo Egnazia. To the Italian press he’s ‘The King of Risotto’ and his pistachio ice cream with a drizzle of olive oil is the talk of tutti in Puglia.

Puglia is a top destination for gourmet travellers. It has a microclimate producing many of the world’s best ingredients, plus fresh seafood from the Adriatic and some of the most delicious cuisine in Italy. One can also enjoy, courtesy of Mario, fantastic cookery lessons – there are four staff to six pupils – who teach us to make Pizza Margherita in an al fresco wood burning pizza oven. Additionally he does Olive Oil Tastings.

Outside the resort there are a number of restaurants. Nearby is Masseria Ciminowhere we eat like Apulian royalty on holiday in the countryside. It’s a 17th century farmhouse with agricultural implements decorating the walls. Dinner is a four- course homemade buffet – simple peasant fare and all of it delicious: from taralli (like delicious olive oil shortbread,) to homemade orecchitte pasta (rabbits’ ears pasta and the region’s speciality), and baked sea bream.

Next we go to Pescheria 2 Mari in the nearby fishing village of Savelletri. (It’s a restaurant ina glass box on the harbour.) Basically it’s a fishmongers where we choose our fish which they then slice (if necessary) and give to us to eat. Sea truffles, octopus, noci (pink mussels) , slivers of sea bass… They serve only raw fish and local wine.

You can play golf on the 18-hole San Domenico Golf Course. (It’s lovely and overlooks the sea.) We also cycle 15 minutes to the ruins of the important ancient city of Egnazia – from which the resort takes its name – to see pots, skeletons, tombs, crypt and acropolis. Some of it is still unexcavated and dating back to the Bronze Age. And all in a picturesque setting beside the sea.

Further afield, we visit Alberobello, ‘The capital of trulli’ – with its Hobbit hovels with conical roofs. Here we wander through alleyways amid these small, round stone houses like so many sun-bleached beehives. Afterwards we enjoy nearby Ostuni – known as The White Town – with its Byzantine-style cathedral and citadel. In its market they sell three types of green bean (one as long as spaghetti), curious indigenous melon- shaped cucumbers and artisan-made burratta (moonballs of double cream mozzarella) plus dried tomatoes.

Among my favourite sights, however, are the olive trees that stand in serried ranks in the estate surrounding Borgo Egnazia. Enormous, ancient olive trees. They are breathtakingly beautiful.

“These trees are two hundred years old, maybe more,” says our driver.

“They’re thousands of years old,” another local tells us later. If we stick around a few hours, the trees will celebrate their millionth birthdays.

Regardless, there are 65 million of them, give or take one or two, in Puglia. And they are, indeed, many hundreds of years old. Until 2005, these olive trees emigrated in biblical numbers – as they were stolen for fashionable gardens by thieves getting £8000-ish per tree. But now they’re protected and produce gallons of delicious extra virgin oils. Forty per cent of Italy’s oil, to be precise.

We can’t take a tree home with us these days. But we take some olive oil. Our stay may end up with us tipping the bathroom scales. It may do the same to the bank balance. But it’s definitely worth it. Without a doubt we’ll be back to visit this special resort on what’s known as the Olive Coast.

Vietnam is the new Thailand. You get incredible history, magical landscapes, deserted white beaches, top colonial hotels and wonderful spas. You find bustling cities – some surpassingly beautiful with the faded elegance of the French colonial era – ancient temples, pagodas and haunting relics of the Vietnam War.

You haggle in colourful markets piled with dry shrimps and Buddhist artefacts, and swipe your plastic in sophisticated shops selling silk clothes and embroidered linens. Then stop to eat delicious street food such as pho (beef broth with noodles) and nem (delicate rice flour rolls filled with glass noodles, shrimps and coriander). You can walk amid pole carriers laden with dragon fruits, or try a three-wheeled cyclo pedicab. If you want to follow in my family’s intrepid footsteps, below is a round-up of destinations and hotels visited during our time in Vietnam.

1) The Sofitel Metropole, Hanoi

The spot: Perfectly situated in the French Quarter, just by the Opera House. It’s near the Old Quarter and Hoan Kiem Lake.

Why stay here: It’s one of the last great historic hotels in Asia. The 1901 Metropole offers French colonial elegance in the old wing and after the $20 million renovations finished last year, a zingy new Opera Wing. They’re virtually separate hotels in character and even have independent lobbies. In the old Metropole Wing there’s traditional furniture, ceiling fans and an old-fashioned shoe-shine service on offer; in the new wing, it’s a bold, contemporary look which slightly misfires. But there are nice touches like a choice of five pillows – doll’s house-sized models of which are popped on your bed for you to choose. Everyone gathers around the courtyard pool to sunbathe and eat fruit kebabs. And if you want history, there’s even a bunker under the poolside Bamboo Bar. Try Le Spa (the only luxury spa in the city) in a double treatment room then have a green-tea-and-bamboo-shoot facial followed by a Sacred Flower Scrub.

Don’t miss: The exquisite 1070 Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first university and the Confucian temple with its five courtyards, ornamental gateways, stone stelae and red lacquer pillars. And the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre for shows from hidden puppeteers standing in waist-high water and musicians on instruments made from dried watermelon.

Retail therapy: Propaganda posters from the Pham Manh gallery. Mangosteen and longan from pole carriers with conical hats and baskets

Must eat: The lotus blossom and bamboo shoot salad at the hotel’s elaborate buffet lunch at Spices Garden. And chocolate teas prepared by their Maitre Chocolatier – think chocolate fondue and chocolate jelly. Otherwise go to Bobby Chinn’s restaurant. He’s South East Asia’s culinary TV star. His temporary restaurant is in his home and it offers bordello décor and global cuisine. Try the lotus-leaf-wrapped caramel ginger chicken and sticky rice.

2) Halong Jasmine junk, Halong Bay

The spot: Breathtaking scenery at UNESCO world heritage site of Halong Bay. Think a seascape of strange-shaped outcrops, caves and coves. The area covers 580 square miles with more than 2,000 limestone pinnacles, pillars and dolomite outcrops scattered across it. Legend has it that a gigantic dragon careered into the sea and created the fantastical islets by lashing its tail in the Gulf of Tonkin. A more conservative view is that they’re the result of erosion over millennia. It’s a place that gets poets’ juices going and inspires artists, who see everything from monks to gods in the rocks and dragons’ lairs in the caves. Halong Jasmine cruises in Lan Ha Bay and anchors at night near 690 island. The brochures and guidebooks make it sound amazing, which it is. But it’s also fantastically touristy.

Why stay here: It’s a traditional junk with fan-shaped golden sails apparently dipped in vegetable dye for protection. But it also has air-con and three floors and sun deck. (At 55 metres long and 11 metres wide, it’s Halong Bay’s largest junk.) There’s polished woodwork, 1930s style Indochine décor and 24 cabins with comfy beds and ensuite shower rooms. It even has a spa. There’s plenty to occupy the water-borne tourists from a welcome drink on boarding to the cooking demo, spa treatments and T’ai Chi on the upper deck at 7am. But I couldn’t help thinking I was on a floating version of a luxury coach.

Don’t miss: Going on a bamboo sampan rowed by a lady in a conical hat to visit Cua Van, the floating village. It has houseboats, a school, pig-pens and tourist-weary residents. Residents live as many as three generations to a room. Later, shuffle with the queues through Sung Sot cave which is larger than most Knightsbridge flats.

Retail therapy: Tourist rubbish and pearls on the mainland and vendors in boats trying to flog shells and wicker hats.

Must eat: The seafood lunch on board, unless you’re going to swim 50km for an alternative.

3) La Residence, Hue

The spot: On the Perfume River with floating dragon boats and sampans, overlooking the ancient Citadel.

Why stay here: La Residence was a former annex to the French governor’s house (the French governor of Annam – now Central Vietnam). The original 1930s house has been sympathetically restored and expanded with two comfortable modern wings and Art Deco-style pieces and fixtures. Think a bowed, nautical facade, high ceilings and pieces that speak of the Jazz Age to the 1950s. There are suites with terraces big enough to build a village and four-posters with mosquito nets. Bedrooms are comfy and many have outstanding views. The lobby is set around Le Gouverneur bar – a bar with Art Deco type murals at the heart of the hotel. There’s a slightly run-down 30-metre saltwater pool in a lush courtyard garden which is great for cooling off from the overwhelming humidity. Near the pool is Le Spa, which has seven treatment rooms. Packages are designed by Italy’s Comfort Zone but the therapists are Vietnamese. I started with ginger and honey tea and ended with a sublime four-handed massage.

Don’t miss: Anything: the Imperial City, royal palaces, pagodas, tombs, statues of Mandarin warriors, dynastic bronze funerary urns and ancient bronze cauldrons. There’s also the Thien Mu Pagoda which still has Thich Quang Duc’s rusty blue Austin. (He was the Buddhist monk who self-immolated in response to persecution.)

Retail therapy: ‘Rolex’ watches ($25) from the Dong Ba Market and conical ‘brushes’ of yellow and red incense.

Must eat: The hotel food doesn’t quite pass muster but for a trip down student-backpacking memory lane, go to Mr Cu’s Mandarin Cafe. It’s one of those places that draws Lonely Planet souls in search of banana pancakes and Vietnamese rice dishes. His charming, naturalist photographs of Vietnamese rural life on the walls are for sale.

4) The Nam Hai, Hoi An

The spot: Miami-meets-Cancun coastline. The resort is hidden from this on a deserted 35-hectare golden stretch of Hoi An Beach overlooking fishing boats bobbing on the China Sea. It’s just 10 minutes from Hoi An, another UNESCO world heritage site.

Why stay here: The Nam Hai is a top chilling option combining haute design with stunning views. It has a manicured resort of 100 almost-Aman villas (Adrian Zecha is a non exec board member) designed by Paris architect Reda Amalou. Villas have chic, contemporary Asian décor by interior decorator Jaya Ibrahim. Think Lombok-style with elegant dark woods, bronze and taupe silks, and moody lighting. The other bathroom opens onto courtyard with alfresco shower. The design and décor brings on a dose of Zen serenity. Choose an Ocean Villa rather than a Pool Villa for better views. Some have private infinity pools edging onto the beach and they’re spacious – even a one-bed villa is 860 sq foot. They come with private butlers and Phuong, our butler, unpacks and packs for us, sorts our laundry and serves us meals by the pool. There are buggies to transport you to the fitness pavilion, tennis, badminton and basket ball courts, as well as the library, kiddies’ club or one of three huge pools leading down to the sea. If you’re feeling pamper-hungry, go harem-style in Le Spa and have a double-handed massage followed by a bathing ceremony in scented water strewn with petals – and look out on flames burning in cauldrons along the lake.

Don’t miss: Great cookery classes with the chef, Binh, after 3km bike ride to buy produce from the local market. (I can now make a mean fresh rice noodles with prawns and a banana blossom salad.) Also take a walking tour in Hoi An with Luong Chinh, a charming English-speaking guide. See the 18th century merchants’ houses, the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Old Quarter, Chinese temples and hundreds of tailors.

Retail therapy: Hand-hammered, patinated bronze bowls with 24k gold leaf interiors from the resort’s shop. Simple tailoring from Yali in Hoi An, which can be made in a couple of days.

Must eat: Go to the restaurant in the resort for Vietnamese specialities such as fish on sugar cane ‘sticks’ and fresh spring rolls. The breakfasts are also excellent: rice congee to vitamin shooters, pomelo marmalade and canary-yellow eggs any which way. In Hoi An try The Cargo Club Restaurant for delicate rice flour dumplings and sesame-crusted tuna.

5) Six Senses Hideaway, Ninh Van Bay

The spot: You’d be hard-pushed to find anywhere more beautiful. It’s on a peninsula which feels like an island because it’s accessible only by boat. There’s nothing nearby, just towering mountains behind, coral-strewn beach in front and views of the South China Sea, Ninh Van Bay and the Hon Heo mountains. The owners have even rented 50,000 square metres of sea in front of the resort to ensure that no noisy boats obstruct the view or disturb the peace.

Why stay here: It really is a no news, no Louboutins (or indeed any shoes) place. Even resort time is set one hour ahead of Hanoi time to allow guests to enjoy more daylight. There are 58 villas, all with private pools and delightfully dotted among the hills, on beach and over rocks. The interior décor is rustic chic with a wooden bath tub and bathroom open to a courtyard with alfresco shower. We walked out of our door of our Beach Villa onto golden sands. But I loved the Spa Suite Villa too – a hilltop villa with its own spa area and stunning views. (You climb about 70 steps to get there.) The Presidential Villa – two beds at $2,800 – is where Prince William and Kate Middleton stayed. We shower to the clicking of geckos, Duc monkeys come down close to the restaurant and sea eagles hover above. Nearby snorkelling is not yet great as the coral reefs with which the resort is fringed are mostly dead. The spa offers holistic treatments in rooms hewn in rocks and forest to the sounds of cicadas and birds. It has blissful bamboo walls, thatched shower and towels on rails made of branches. The very un-local Lomi Lomi (Hawaiian massage based on an ancient Shamanic rite of passage) is great. The new GM promises great things but he’ll need a good English teacher and a big new broom. Service can be rural and, luckily, a new chef is en route, too.

Don’t miss: The visit to lobster farm on a local fishing boat (kitted out with bamboo roof and white-towel-covered mattresses) then a BBQ lunch on the beach.

Must eat: Have a private dinner in the wine cave dotted with tea lights, or a BBQ lunch on a deserted beach. We were looked after beautifully by a private staff of two boatmen, one chef and a waiter.

6) Park Hyatt, Saigon

The spot: Near the 19th-century post office (still in use) and the 19th century Notre Dame Cathedral in a city that is an economic powerhouse.

Why stay here: It’s an unbeatable oasis in a city of eight million people and four million motorbikes. The Park Hyatt Saigon is built in faux-colonial style. It also has French-colonial-inspired décor, a great outdoor pool and 24-hour butler on every floor. The hotel is run with consummate professionalism and slick service. The GM, an Australian called Michael Golden, has the golden touch. There’s a good jazz performer every night in the lounge. HCMC has a staggering number of hotels but this one is said to beat them all.

Don’t miss: The grimly fascinating War Remnants Building in the former US Information Service building. Also 25 miles northwest are the Cu Chi tunnels – used by the Viet Cong for guerilla warfare and mounting surprise attacks. Built at different levels, they extended for more than 125 miles.

Retail therapy: Catherine Denoual for beautiful French-style bed and table linen by a French woman living in Ho Chi Minh City and Apricot Gallery for contemporary Vietnamese artists. Saigon Square for fake Converses (£6 a pair).

Must eat: Superlative Vietnamese street-food-inspired cuisine at the hotel’s Saigon Square One restaurant. Try the soft shell crabs with coconut, ginger and tamarind; shrimps on sugar cane; beef rolls with la lot (wild betel) leaf and five spices; and sea bass with lotus leaves. Then palm sugar ice-cream, passion fruit sorbet and warm coconut brownies. Have it with local beer or fresh juices – from guava to sour sop (like custard apple) and small, sweet fresh coconut. Also incredible buffet breakfasts in the Opera Restaurant, which is trattoria-style and overlooks Lam Son Square.

Unless you’re going by private Lear jet, hot-air balloon or in First Class, there can’t be a better way to fly to New York than aboard the Bankers’ Express, BA001. Launched last September, it’s the Club World only service that avoids the US immigration queues by stopping briefly in Shannon, Ireland to complete the fierce US formalities and to refuel.

There’s almost enough space on board the plane to play baseball – 32 flat-bed seats (but room for 100 ordinary seats); decent enough food of the asparagus and port reduction drizzle variety; fabulous service (when I flew, if there had been one more passenger we’d have outnumbered the crew); and a cute mobile phone icon which tells you when you may contact Earth.

I powered my laptop, pressed a buzzer for help which arrived within a nanosecond and used enough hot towels to open a Chinese restaurant. Then, seemingly moments later, we touched down at JFK’s domestic airport. Perhaps uniquely for a commercial carrier, I was the only person on the flight with checked-in baggage (is there a social stigma attached to being the only loser who has enough spare time to wait to retrieve checked luggage?).

Next we test drove the Farrell limousine service. This is one of New York’s most expensive car companies, offering a service that is beloved of discreet celebrities, private money and families into their fourth generation of Farrell hire. They have gleaming clean sedans, stretchers and formals, plus vans for the Louis Vuitton and professional-beyond-professional, always-early, often multilingual drivers. (‘It’s the best limo service in Manhattan,’ says The Mark Hotel’s general manager, James Sherwin, sitting later in his office among gratefully signed photos from British royals and Very Important People.)

Our first stop is The Mark, the 1923 über-chic Upper East Side hotel with 100 rooms and 50 suites. It’s fresh from a $150 million refit by Jacques Grange – who boasts the Légion d’honneur and is decorator to Princess Caroline and formerly to Yves Saint Laurent – and reopened in August 2009. It’s more like an impressive contemporary gallery than a hotel, but a gallery where your every need and whim is tended to by an impeccable staff. In this ‘gallery’, renowned designers from Paul Mathieu to Vladimir Kagan have created one-off pieces for the playful ground-floor rooms.

The lobby has a jazzy black and white marble floor and ‘Ge-Off Sphere’ Ron Arad pendant light; there is a witty, cloud-shaped bar by Guy de Rougemont and a herd of pony-skin sofas and bespoke geometric carpet; the restaurant has upholstered bar stools and free standing curved banquettes; and upstairs is a more muted kind of chic. Every time you look there seems to be another well-known face being welcomed by the hotel’s Turnbull & Asser clad staff. Oh look, that’s Woody Allen. And there’s Barbara Walters.

We’re just one block from Central Park (think passing hounds fresh from shampoo and set, with Tina Turneresque accessories and private roof gardens on which to cock their pretty legs) and at the centre of the civilised world, near the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. But it’s our elder daughter Anya’s first time in NY and (aside from the sartorial hell-hole that is Abercrombie & Fitch, with its torso-baring shop assistants and Glastonbury-decibel music) Harlem is high on her to-do list.

We sightsee in a Farrell Cadillac stretch, driving around the new look Harlem-meets-Zurich – the former black spot polished up by Rudy Giuliani with his hit squads and now full of smiling policemen thanks to Michael Bloomberg and moved into by Bill Clinton with his office. We pass a bright yellow ‘Sidewalk Sunday School’ van wreathed in balloons: God has moved in mysterious ways to replace the burned-out cars of yesteryear. Then we drive past Sylvia’s Restaurant where the politicians hang out for soul food of pigs’ trotters and gizzards, and which has now become a global food brand.

Back on the Upper East Side we lunch at The Wright, the Guggenheim’s recently opened arty restaurant with an iconic Frank Lloyd Wright museum attached. It’s in a sleek white-on-white space – designed by Andre Kikoski, a leading new-garde architect – with curvilinear walnut walls and a layered white ceiling that echoes the original corkscrew building.

It serves modern American (seasonal, local and sustainable) food cooked by ex David Bouley chef, Rodolfo Contreras. Its 58 seats and communal table are packed. Think signature dishes like green market vegetables with slowly cooked egg and truffle and Michelin-style presentation. I don’t get the benefit of cooking an egg slowly but, hey, the food passes muster.

After lunch it’s time to test drive another car company, Jeff Kaplan’s E-Z Ryder. It’s the favourite of in-the-know Lady Cosima Somerset of Concierge London and NYC fame. (An erstwhile friend of Princess Di and niece of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Lady Cosima knows how to pick classy wheels.) Outside a big sign in the window of a four-wheel drive reads ‘E-Z Ryder Welcomes Caroline’. E-Z Ryder is a small, family-run business, with its cars with blacked-out windows, and another celebrity car firm of choice.

We do a lifetime of shopping and our accommodating driver seems never to tire of circling the block to avoid parking restrictions. We visit the sort of adolescent must-see emporiums that would exhaust you just wading through their names on a list. Meanwhile E-Z Ryder is a teen dream with its armrest full of candies and gums. And as the parcels and packages pile up, we use the car as a luggage depot. (There’s little better than going shopping with a driver.)

So which shops to recommend? Abercrombie, American Apparel and Victoria’s Secret be damned. My personal favourite and top of the (non-adolescent) list isBellhaus, the new lifestyle store aimed at the working woman and fashionable man. It’s Dover Street Market meets, er, Beach in the City. It sells ready-to-wear (including many American designers) plus accessories, candles, beauty, eye wear, Kilian fragrances, vintage pieces (up to $38,000) and Carlos Falchi daytime totes for $220.

Afterwards we have a sunset hour drink in Andre Balazs’ Boom Boom room at The Standard hotel. With its floor-to-ceiling windows (including in the loo) it enjoys spectacular views up the Hudson River. It’s a gawpingly great room 18 floors above the Meatpacking District with Art Deco-meets-contemporary features. A wannabe Studio 54, it has guest-list only pretensions, waitresses in skimpy dresses, a black-tiled room with triangular soaking tub, vertiginous glass-floored smoking terraces and hype to match.

In the evening, we return to The Mark. At this hour, slinky women in Christian Louboutin heels and fitted faces sit in the bar at low-flying cloud tables. Nearby, dapper men stand with practiced smiles and sky-scraper-deep pockets. As they follow their social X-rays into dinner in The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (Vongerichten), we return to our suite: to a soothing place of custom-made furniture and black and white marble Art Deco bathroom. I could happily stay here for days longer. And just then we hear news of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. We couldn’t have planned it better…

As we arrive, a baboon is trying to break into our tent. The manageress shoos him away and calls a guard who arrives with his spear a few minutes later. She says our primate friend won’t return unless we offer him sweets, which seems good enough reason to ban sugar from Africa. The frisson we feel increases when we learn that guests are only allowed to their tents accompanied by guards. Welcome to the delightful excitements of Naibor Camp, one of the most exclusive tented safari camps in Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve.

The camp is hidden in a grove of riverine woodland on the banks of the Talek River, enjoying possibly the best location in the Mara. Captivatingly, hippos bathe in the river at the bottom of its garden and can be seen hauling themselves out in the evening. The area has the region’s highest concentration of leopard. Rhino hang out on the south side of the river. Plus it’s strategically placed for the wildebeest migration, being close to all the major crossing sites on the Mara River. And because it’s in the heart of the Mara, there’s wildlife viewing throughout the year.

There’s a small air-strip 30 minutes away for landing private planes (or for charter ones, if you must). Or it takes mere seconds to get here if you come in a Lady Lori helicopter, as did the squillionaire who had our tent before us. The celebrity transport of choice, Lady Lori is renowned for accessing the inaccessible from finding a plant not seen by botanists since the Seventies to offering superlative safaris from the air.

But we’re here to enjoy things from the ground, to explore from an open-sided Land Cruiser the rolling open grassland and Safari Wonderland outside our tarpaulin door. So, accompanied by our guide Daudi wearing Masai suka (blanket) and beaded headdress – we set forth into Animal Disney World. We don’t wish to spend time spotting different strains of the Greater and Lesser Safari Jeep or the hot-air balloons that litter the sky so Daudi takes us off the beaten plain.

We are soon rewarded with a herd of elephant, including mini Barbars gambolling and frolicking in the sun; a band of mongoose; and enough zebra to make a crossing. Then we see one of the world’s most spectacular sights: thousands of wildebeest and zebra crossing the great Mara River. A crocodile hovers nearby. But I have to admit that, in this instance, there are also other predators in sight: the animals are closely surrounded by bands of Homo sapiens and a fleet of four wheel drives.

Our next stop is lunch. It’s nothing like the steak and baked pineapple and custard enjoyed by some back at Naibor Camp. Instead we’re served a truly memorable Out of Africa picnic complete with chairs, table and chest of food eaten under a tree on the open plain under the wide sky. If it’s specifics you want, then imagine delicious chicken drumsticks with rosemary and honey and potato salad, eaten under the ‘sausage’ fruit tree beloved of rhinos and in which the leopard likes to lie with his kill.

Back at base camp and done for the day with the wonders of the natural world, it’s hard not to marvel at some man-made wonders. Take the Little Naibor tented suites with their enormous under-lit, low-floating beds on fig-wood bases, Savannah-sized cream sofas and African wool rugs: contemporary style allied with muted bush colours. And as for the Mess Tent with its rustic fig-wood dining table and chunky bush dining ‘thrones’…well, it’s pure Conran en Afrique. And if such style doesn’t sound like the bush, you should try reflexology in the spa tent…

Naibor Camp is also so eco it makes you weep and recycle your tears of joy. Everything is solar- run. It has safari showers and charcoal-heated irons. It attracts khaki-heeled guests who want to leave the world a better place, families, people who want luxury in the bush and rich businessmen. It’s also popular with honeymooners, sipping sundowners and eating romantic meals privately under the stars. After all, it’s particularly charming at night; candlelit and gas lanterns light the paths as the sounds of hippos, frogs and crickets fill the air. And as you sit chatting about the day’s adventures around that communal table, a camp fire burns cheerily…

From £1868 per person based on two sharing for 3nights on a fully inclusive basis including flights, air taxes, park fees and transfers. Book through Scott Dunn: 020 8682 5000; www.scottdunn.com; www.naibor.com. Lady Lori helicopters can also be arranged through Scott Dunn.