There are many reasons to travel to India, and food is one of them – despite its reputation for Delhi Belly. While dishes vary across the country – from the seafood curries of Kerala to the tandoori flavours of Punjab – one common dish you’ll find almost everywhere is the thali. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Copyright @ 2010 VH Media

In Maximum City, Suketu Mehta’s portrait of Bombay, we discover the “biggest, fastest, richest city in India.” Mehta, a journalist who now lives in New York, returns to the city of his youth after a 21-year absence to investigate the bloody riots of 1992-1993. What he finds is a city lost and found. According to Mehta, the city – now referred to as Mumbai – has always had multiple aliases, “as do gangsters and whores.” To read the full story, click here.

Photo Credit: suketumehta.com

Feeling the winter blues, or looking for a last-minute March break getaway? If you want to avoid resorts and crowded beaches, but are longing for white-sand beaches and that turquoise Caribbean water, look no further than Nicaragua. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Copyright @ 2010 VH Media

So you’ve booked a flight to Thailand, and now you’re hearing news reports about protests in Bangkok. What do you do? When traveling to destinations where political or social unrest may occur, it doesn’t mean you have to cancel your trip (or spend the entire time holed up in your hotel room). I’ve traveled to China during SARS (I reasoned that I was coming from Toronto), to Nepal during Maoist uprisings and to Thailand last year during protests in Bangkok. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Credit: interactimages @ Flickr

Standing at the top of La Danta, one of the largest pyramids in the world, jungle stretches out around you as far as the eye can see – no villages, no roads, no signs of human life. Nothing, except the sound of chattering monkeys and squawking birds. It’s also at this point you realize you have to trudge through this jungle for several days to get back to civilization. But for this view, it’s worth it. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Copyright @ 2010 VH Media

Perhaps, like me, you’ve found yourself caught in a torrential downpour in the middle of nowhere, and that well-worn “waterproof” jacket you’re wearing isn’t so waterproof anymore. I now carry one of those emergency disposable rain ponchos in my backpack, just in case, but if you don’t want to look like you’re wearing a giant garbage bag, there’s another option. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Credit: Granger’s

When most people think of ancient ruins in Southeast Asia, they think of Angkor in Cambodia – but there’s actually another site that rivals Angkor in scale and scope and is, perhaps, even more impressive. There are literally thousands of temples in Bagan, an ancient city in Myanmar (aka Burma), set in a vast plain along the Irrawaddy River. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Copyright @ 2010 VH Media

Whether or not you’re seeking enlightenment in this lifetime, Borobudur is a UNESCO World Heritage Site worth visiting if you’re in Central Java, Indonesia. Located near the city of Yogyakarta (a pretty cool city in its own right), the 9th century temple is the world’s largest Buddhist stupa, with a surface area of 2,500 square metres, which represents a cosmological model of the universe. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Credit: Elaphurus @ Flickr

Perhaps it’s because I recently saw Cairo Time, a brilliant movie by writer/director Ruba Nadda, at Canada’s Top Ten film festival, that I’ve had ruins on my mind. I have yet to see the Pyramids of Giza, but I’ve spent years traveling to destinations to see what remains of ancient civilizations. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Credit: Chi King @ Flickr

Over the past few decades, Beijing has been intent on tearing down the old and putting up the new, an effort that only increased during the buildup to the 2008 Summer Olympics. Many of the city’s ancient hutongs – narrow alleyways in the city’s centre – were torn down and replaced with modern apartment blocks and roads. The hutongs, however, have defined Beijing culture for hundreds of years and give the city its unique character. To read the full story, click here.

Photo Copyright @ 2010 VH Media