Here's how to make the best of this eminently civilised and companionable mode of transport in the twenty-first century.  More images

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Diu Island in Gujarat, India has a history going back even further. It is said that in the era of Satyuga (between two and three million years ago, a time when “the gods walked the earth”), a certain King Jalandhar ruled over the island. According to legend, he was a real bad dude, and accordingly was disposed of by the aforesaid gods.

In Estonia, the ancient culture of Hiiumaa Island was home to the “Mad Baron” von Ungern-Sternberg.  He is said to have led troops in Mongolia, treating the Mongols with “unparalleled savagery”. Eventually, in 1921, Ungern-Sternberg was handed over to the Bolsheviks for execution. Even today teachers at Suuremõisa College (the baron's former manor) and electricians working on the manor house claim to have seen or heard his ghost.

What, if anything, do these three widely separated islands have in common?                                                           

Noel Kelly, head of the Koh Samui Tourist Police Volunteers' Group on Thailand’s Koh Samui Island, has a unique view into the current state of tourism on the island. “Petty theft is a major problem”, he says. “We work with the Tourist Police to provide assistance in these and other cases. The role of the Tourist Police is not to police the tourists, but to act as a cultural bridge.”

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Pleşu may well have had the Danube-Main-Rhine rivers in mind. When a cruise ship gets stranded in the Bavarian city of Würzburg after swollen river levels prevent it from passing under the city’s low stone bridges, the result becomes an exercise in "What if...?"

The crew handle the situation with a good deal of aplomb, as passengers are bussed to some of the places on the ship's scheduled itinerary. But eventually the long wait becomes a muse on the very nature of rivers and their role in “The New Europe”.

The Outback sets its own priorities: too many visitors take liberties with it.  If you get it wrong out here, you may not see home again.  Is the easy availability of camper vans and guidebooks creating a false sense of security?

Here are some newspaper headlines from within a 48-hour period…

"Ill-prepared Geman tourist tries to travel stock route".  A 36-year-old man set out on a rough, remote desert road with one litre of water and a packet of biscuits.  

"German tourist taken by crocodile"  A German backpacker ignored the safety warnings to go swimming at midnight in a dangerous lagoon.  

Some years ago, an Austrian couple bogged their camper van on the shores of Lake Eyre, the vast inland salt lake.   Before help came, the woman died. 

On a trip through the notorious Simpson Desert I was appalled to see that a lavishly illustrated guidebook used by one of my companions marked one of the sand tracks as a thick red line across the map – suggesting a route that anyone can follow!

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"Generation Y", also known as "Millennials," "Generation Next," the "Echo Boom," or the "Digital Generation", were born (depending on who you talk to) between 1978 and 1994, which means they’ve not yet hit 30. And while often seen as a marketer’s dream, Generation Y is proving even harder to reach than Generation X, simply because they’re at saturation point – creating a real challenge for tourism operators wanting to access this younger market segment.