Darjeeling, India

TEA REIGNS in Darjeeling, where life is marked by the four harvest seasons: first flush in spring, the second flush in June, monsoon season (yes, it’s a tea season) July-August, and the autumn flush from October into November.

 WHERE TO STAY

The local icon is the Windamere Hotel, a cluster of country-cozy cottages from British raj times, with vintage furnishings and historical artifacts (guests have included the king of Sweden and Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary). Its hillside location makes for wide views of the high Himalaya. Visitors also can and should stay at one of the tea estates, most of which offer tours and visits to their tea-processing facilities.

Will Travel for Coffee

A BEAN BUYER HEADS FOR HIGHER GROUNDS

IN THE “BEAN BELT” looping Africa, Asia, and the Americas, coffee provides more than a jolt—it’s an economic lifeline and a cultural bedrock. Kim Elena Ionescu stewards that link between bean and barista as a buyer and sustainability manager for North Carolina roaster Counter Culture Coffee, working one-on-one with growers and helping to set environmental standards for the coffee trade.


Her hunt for the planet’s best beans has taken her from Bolivia to Ethiopia. Steeped in ritual, her adventures are anything but stale. She shares a few highlights here:

RED-EYE TRAVEL The best-tasting coffee comes from high elevations, which means transit to rural, mountainous areas. On one trip to Peru, 1 flew to Cusco and had a 14-hour drive ahead of me, through the night on dirt roads in a pickup in the Andes.

Wisconsin’s Fiery Favorite

IT’S FISH BOIL TIME ON DOOR PENINSULA

like its cousin, the New England clambake, the fish boil of the upper Great Lakes grew out of a community coming together to celebrate local bounty. The custom of poaching the day’s catch with potatoes was brought over by the region’s Scandinavian settlers and no doubt sustained many a hearty soul on these rocky, wind-whipped shores.

Pay Less to Phone Home

Q. I’m taking a two-week trip to Norway. How do I inexpensively call family back home? Don’t purchase a pricey international plan from your wireless carrier. For example, AT&T’s least|expensive rate costs an extra $30 per month and charges $1 a minute for your calls in Scandinavia. Instead, when you get to your destination, buy a SIM card or a phone that offers cheap data and make all of your calls on Skype, Google, or Viber (which won’t cost extra). SIM cards essentially make your phone go native in the country you are in. Telenor, the Norwegian national carrier, offers these cards for about $10 a month for data-only service. It’s superior to a phone call because you can actually show your loved ones back home the hand-carved troll you picked up at the Etnemarknaden.

A wedding procession makes its way along the Tonle Sap riverfront

Among the colonial mansions lining the streets around the Royal Palace, and visit the ornate iron pavilion assembled on the palace grounds as a gift from Napoleon III. Across the way is the National Museum, with its graceful multitiered wooden roof that for years housed a massive bat colony, bedeviling the efforts of curators trying to preserve the Angkorian sculptures below.

Phnom Penh Crossroads

“Mama, do you see that echo?” my daughter asked. “On the wall there, looking at me.” She was three years old, and it was her first visit to Phnom Penh, the city of my birth. “Why are there so many in Cambodia?”

Spotlight on Bonito: Wet Is Best

It’s not easy to get out from under the shadow of a place like Brazil’s Pantanal-a natural wetland bigger than England and home to a biodiversity bonanza of such rare species as the tapir and the jaguar. Yet the town of Bonito, on the Pantanal’s border, is emerging as one of Brazil’s favorite adventure outposts, no longer the secret of wayfarers who stopped here for rest en route to the wetland.