by Jean Nethery, Blairsville, GA

For years I have wanted to visit medieval cities on the Mediterranean coast, ride a camel on the Sahara Desert and explore still-intact Roman ruins. For 2009, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) offered a 15-day trip to Tunisia with a pretrip to Marrakesh, Morocco, and a post-trip extension to the Sahara. This was a new trip for OAT (Cambridge, MA; 800/493-6824, www.oattravel.com) and because my husband, Al, and I like small-group tours wrapped with...

by Donna Judd, Fullerton, CA

On March 28, 2009, I stepped off the cruise ship, alone, into the exotic chaos that is Mumbai — nearly 17 million strong — for a memorable travel experience, my first in India. This was the termination point of my cruise from Mauritius, and I hoped to meet Mr. Santosh Sharma, with whom I’d developed a recent e-mail friendship through an international photography group.

After a few sweltering minutes spent ignoring a beggar and aggressive taxi...

by James Ure, Salt Lake City, UT

“For your birthday,” said my companion, Judy Martin, “I want to buy you dinner — in Paris on New Year’s Eve.” This was her gift to me in August ’08. Our holiday week in the City of Light began on Dec. 29.

Getting settled

Judy had spent a lot of time researching flights on the Internet, and as a result she was able to secure two business-class round-trip tickets from Salt Lake City to Paris using only 95,000 miles from each of our Delta...