If it's January, it must be Kerala, if it's October, then it's Mozambique

Are you still deciding where to take your holiday in 1999? Travel journalist of the year Jill Crawshaw gives a run-down of destinations to suit all tastes and suggests the best time to visit...

January

GET OUT your toothbrush, sunscreen and rucksack, apply for your visa (allow three weeks by post) and head east to the shores of India, where holiday prices have halved since Christmas and the weather is at its best.

If you are a sun'n'sand seeker, Kerala has some wonderful undiscovered beaches, although development has caught up with Kovalam, the main resort. But much of Kerala's charm lies in its fabulous varied scenery, with around 1,000 miles of tranquil backwaters to explore by rice-barge, first- rate wildlife sanctuaries and one of the Orient's most fascinating cosmopolitan ports, Cochin.

Twelve-hour charters to Trivandrum are quicker than scheduled flights via Delhi or Bombay. Inspirations (tel: 01293 822244) offers flights and basic YMCA-style "Dormhouse" accommodation from pounds 409-pounds 439 for two weeks, pounds 75 for an extra week - most holidaymakers only use the simple accommodation included for a night or two.

The newly opened Konkan Railway, from Mumbai to Mangalore, now links Kerala with Goa, which is considered 10 years ahead in its tourist development (or over-development), with better food and more accessible alcohol.

The 65-mile coastline is one long sandy beach, the prettiest resort being Palolem in the far south. Lazydays in Goa (tel: 0114-286 4798) offers country villas - often old Portuguese mansions - sleeping four, for pounds 480 per villa for a week, excluding flights but including a car and chauffeur.

It is worth facing the year's lowest temperatures and shortest days to pick up excellent skiing bargains this month. You can get flights and a week's studio accommodation in the "Downhill Racers Mecca" of Val d'lsere for pounds 219-pounds 249 from Thomson Holidays (tel: 0181-210 4555).

Want to be a New Man or Woman? Get hold of the dull-sounding but excellent Time to Learn - pounds 4.95 from NIACE Publications (tel: 0116-204 4200) - with more than 3,000 holiday courses, mostly in the UK, from shiatsu and blacksmithing to feng shui and reflexology. Weekends cost around pounds 75.

february

SERIOUS PARTYING is the order of the day when carnival gets under way, so if you want to join the inhabitants of several continents at play, this is the time to holiday.

Biggest bash of all is the Rio Carnival, a frenzy of steamy days and all-night revelling up to Ash Wednesday, with parades, extravagant costume balls, and the escolas de samba club procession - it's all here, in one of the most physical, stunning, sexual and sometimes dangerous cities in the world. Flights through STA (tel: 0171-361 6262) cost from around pounds 399.

This is also Mardi Gras month in "The Big Easy", aka New Orleans, where Ash Wednesday there is known as Mississippi Hangover Day. In the surprisingly tiny French quarter, 50 different carnival clubs or "krewes" parade their themed and elaborately costumed floats, and there is gargantuan consumption of Cajun cocktails, crayfish, crab and good or bad jazz in roughly equal proportions.

Nearer home, Venice must be the world's greatest stage-set for its own carnival, restarted in 1979 after being banned by Napoleon in 1797. Now there are a mere 10 days of fireworks in St Mark's Square, private balls in the palazzi, and masked revellers everywhere. Flights from pounds 100 return with Go (tel: 0845 605 4321).

Get out your thermals if you want to head north for China's Ice Lantern Festival in Harbin, where normally grey parks blaze with colour as fairy lights decorate vast ice-carvings of Chinese and Western buildings, animals and mountain scenery - all in temperatures as low as 30C.

The Imaginative Traveller (tel: 0181-742 8612) is offering new week-long escorted or independent trips to the festival, leaving Peking on 19 February, and costing pounds 485 for all internal transport and accommodation (flights from the UK are not included but they can be arranged).

march

BEWARE OF extravagant claims about the weather in some brochures; the Med, and even the Middle East, can still suffer moody conditions. You will really need to travel further afield - as far as The Gambia, for example, where there is the cheapest, absolutely guaranteed non-stop sunshine, with high temperatures and low humidity, and it is only six hours flying time from the UK.

An unsophisticated destination, restless holidaymakers claim it can be boring. To see the real Africa and experience the hospitality of local people you will need to get away from the westernised hotels on boat, bush or bird-watching trips. Night-owls should holiday elsewhere.

For a flight only, The Gambia Experience (tel: 01703 733311) charges pounds 298; seven-night b&b packages at the African Village cost from pounds 339.

For the more energetic, March is Nepal's second trekking season - quieter than the now somewhat frantic October and November. As long as you are fairly active and in good health, you will find a trek to suit you - although some are physically demanding, the majority are far from arduous, with between four and six hours walking each day. The important thing is to choose a trek of the right grade for you.

Sherpa Expeditions (tel: 0181-577 2717) - which grades its treks from the simpler "A" to the most challenging "E" - offers the 14-day, fairly easy Annapurna Explorer, from Pokhara through rain-forests and small family villages, for pounds 1,195 including flights, accommodation and porterage. The more strenuous 24-day Annapurna Circuit - into the Manang Valley over the Thorong La Pass with views towards Tibet - costs pounds 1,595. If you prefer to go independently, STA (tel: 0171-361 6262) offers a flight to Kathmandu for pounds 627 (pounds 547 for under-26s) where you can pick up a trek from a host of specialist companies.

Europe is still blustery, but pavements and tempers are still cool, so why not give yourself a treat on a city break? Both Nice and Barcelona should be basking in balmy spring temperatures; Budapest, the most laid- back of the former Iron Curtain capitals, is rapidly catching up on Prague; and Istanbul is sloughing off its wintry Bosphorus chill. The short-break specialist, Brief Encounters (tel: 0181-987 6108), offers three nights in each capital in some style for pounds 299, pounds 347, pounds 345 and pounds 390 respectively, including flights.

april

WITH JAPAN more affordable than it has been for years, now could be the time to catch "Hanami" (literally Flower Viewing), the cherry-season festival that unofficially marks the advent of spring. But you will have to be quick - it only lasts four days. During this time, the Japanese like to party in the various parks - Ueno Park in Tokyo is one of the most famous, transformed into a Japanese watercolour of pink and white. Different regions celebrate at different times; Tokyo's Hanami is usually held in the first week in April.

Flights to Tokyo cost around pounds 440; a seven-day Japanese rail pass for unlimited travel costs pounds 140; a single room in a ryokan, or guest-house, costs pounds 22, and YHA room, pounds 13. Call the Japanese National Tourist Organisation (tel: 0171-734 9638) for details of bargain tourist deals.

Think about visiting the Middle East before the full summer heat kicks in, and learning to dive at the same time. Egypt's Sharm el Sheikh is no beauty spot, but well placed on the edge of the Sinai so that you can take camel or jeep safaris into the desert, climb Mount Sinai, visit Saint Catherine's monastery and, maybe, see something of Bedouin culture. Below sea-level, the Red Sea has some of the best diving and snorkelling in the world. STA's Learn-to-Dive package, with flights, seven nights b&b in dormitory accommodation, and the PADI open water course, costs pounds 439 (pounds 70 more if you decide to stay in a hotel).

Europe's most spectacular Easter celebrations are the Semana Santa, or Holy Week, in Seville. Book accommodation now if you want to attend. A fortnight later is the Feria, with flamenco dancing, bullfights and parades of horse-drawn carriages, the streets lined with casetas - open booths offering entertainment and hospitality. Thomson Breakaway offers three nights b&b in Seville from pounds 325-pounds 374.

may

AFTER EASTER, prices to the Caribbean plummet, and it is well before the steamy heat and hurricane season, so now is the time for sun-seekers to cross the Atlantic.

No doubt about the flavour of the year - it's Cuba, the huge 700-mile- long island with the vibrant blend of Afro-Caribbean, Spanish colonial and Marxist heritage

spiced with salsa, rum, powder-pink Fifties Chevies, plus the world's best cigars. Stay at the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Havana's old quarter where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls - his room on the fifth floor has been left as it was, as has most of the hotel. Do the tourist circuit; down one of his mojitas at US$4 a shot at the El Bodegulta bar nearby, eat in the paladares, the small privately owned restaurants in people's homes - but get there fast - refugee holidaymakers and package- tour operators, disillusioned with the Dom Rep, are hard on your heels. Regent Holidays (tel: 0117-921 1711) can fix flights for pounds 390, as well as budget accommodation and transport.

If culture is on your agenda, the Van Dyck exhibition starts in Antwerp on 15 May (until 15 August), and is likely to be the most talked-about art event of the year. A boy genius, Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) lived and worked as a pupil of Rubens in Antwerp, becoming painter to the English court of Charles I at 33. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the artist's birth, this, the largest ever exhibition of his work will include some little-known watercolours and etchings.

To view the show in depth, accompanied by an expert, join one of the Prospect Tours (tel: 0181-995 2163) three-night b&b trips by Eurostar for pounds 275.

May is all fun and festivity in the Camargue, the haunting watery wilderness of the Rhone delta, best known for its pink flamingos, wild white horses, real cowboys and raging bulls.

Gypsies gather from all over the world in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, some in traditional horse-drawn caravans, others in luxurious modern vans pulled by gleaming Mercedes, to worship their patron saint, an Ethiopian servant who accompanied Saint Mary Salome and Saint Mary Jacobeus here when they landed after fleeing persecution in Judaea. Religious processions carrying statues out to sea take place on 24 and 25 May, but the event has now also become a pop festival with music and dancing for a week. Flights to Marseilles cost around pounds 209 (pounds 149 if under 26).

june

IT IS Midnight Sun time above the Arctic Circle, so cash in on the long, bright days to sightsee in Scandinavia and beyond.

Buy yourself a mask if you ever want to sleep in Norway's enchanting and trendy little Lofoten Islands; the sun simply never sets over a series of stunning panoramas from early June to mid-July. Favourite haunts of cod fishermen, artists and writers, the Lofotens abound with cormorants, guillemots and eagles, and you can fish, hike, canoe, climb, even swim from silver beaches. Inntravel (tel: 01653 628811) offers rust-coloured rorbus - converted fishermen's cottages - for rent, which jut out on stilts over the water, each cottage coming with its own rowing boat. Seven nights fly-drive and accommodation costs from pounds 898 per person, including car hire.

Ideal for insomniacs - Midnight Sun flights to Tromso, in Northern Norway, every Sunday and Thursday from 20 June to 22 July, from Scandinavian Travel Service (tel: 0171-559 6666). Overnight flights leave Heathrow at about 10pm, arriving in Tromso at 2am where you will be taken up Mount Storsteinen for some great views and a celebratory drink. Then it is back to Heathrow by 6.30am for another dawn; and all for pounds 179.

Spring flowers should be in full bloom by now in the UK. "Bed and Breakfast UK for Garden Lovers" is a collection of 102 members who offer b&b accommodation for pounds 25-pounds 35 a night per person. The enthusiastic hosts all have interesting gardens themselves and will direct guests to horticultural treasures locally.

For a leaflet, send a self-addressed 22cm/11cm envelope with four loose first-class stamps to BBGL, Handywater Farm, Sibford Gower, Banbury, Oxon OX15 5AE.

july

FOLLOW THE plodding footsteps of Benedict Allen and his camels, as seen on BBC2, and visit the Nadaam Fair on the Mongolian Steppes where nomads and herders pit their skills in hotly contested races, archery and wrestling competitions.

And why not combine a visit with a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway offshoot, the Trans-Mongolian, from Moscow to Ulan Bator? Campus Travel (tel: 0171-730 8111) has introduced a 10-day rail adventure which includes two nights in Moscow, excursions to experience the traditional life of nomadic families who still live in "gers" (felt tents), and also includes the last leg of the journey to Peking. The cost is approximately pounds 950 (including return flight to Moscow), and other Trans-Mongolian options are also available.

Keen skiers should check their boots, visas and budgets and head off down under for the summer's great snow party in Queenstown, New Zealand's most macho resort - white-water rafting, bungee-jumping, mountain-biking, jet-boating and heli-skiing are practically compulsory!

"Wild and Wacky", the mid-July Winter Festival is a week-long rave of street and slope parties. Bridge the World (tel: 0171- 911 0900) will get you a round-trip there via Christchurch from around pounds 679. The New Zealand Immigration Service (tel: 0991 100100 - premium rate) allows a limited number of working visas for 18 to 30-year-old gap yearers and travellers.

Try to beat the school holidays and the meltemi winds if you are a fan of Greece - but remember, the most escapist hideaways can be at the end of a long and complicated journey. Get out your maps and find dots such as Halki or Lipsi, Amorgos, Samothrace, Rythera, Folegandros, Iraklia and Serifos. Campus Travel (tel: 0171- 730 3402) has a wide range of air fares, including to Athens for approximately pounds 247 including tax. The Greek National Tourism Organisation (tel: 0171-734 5997) produces a useful leaflet on ferry connections.

August

UP TO two million spectators are expected to make Cornwall soon after 11am on August 11 for the last solar eclipse of the millennium - even though there is only a 40% chance of clear skies on the great day.

Many hotels and guest-houses are already putting out their "full up" signs for August, but Farm and Country Holidays (tel: 01237 479698) can offer farm properties sleeping four, six miles from St Ives, (which expects two minutes and five seconds darkness from 11 minutes past 11). A week there costs pounds 838 for the property. Other farm homes are available near Looe (1 minute 52 seconds), and near Helston (two minutes six seconds). For hotel reservations, call the RAC (tel: 0870 603 9109) or the Cornwall County Eclipse Steering Group (tel: 08706 081199).

After Cornwall, the shadows are expected to fall across north-eastern France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Romania. There is still space in Austria's Lake District, the Salzkammergut; Thomsons Lakes & Mountains (tel: 0181- 210 4555) offers a week for around pounds 425, including flights and half-board, while the longest total eclipse of almost two-and a-half minutes is expected over Romania. Many organised tours are full, but STA can still fly you there for pounds 228.

If you are looking for empty beaches, head for the Seychelles where our summer is their best season (rainy days peak in December and ), but make sure you island-hop beyond Mahe, the most developed island. Airwaves (tel: 0181-875 1188) has a "small and friendly collection" based on local family-run pensions and auberges from around pounds 830 for five nights b&b, including flights.

If you prefer to party, follow the backpackers trail via Bali and Lombok to Indonesia's Gill Islands, particularly Gill Trawangan, where there are full-moon parties each month, and each restaurant and bamboo bungalow gives a party in turn one night of the week. Row across to Gilo Meno or Gili Air for r&r. Flights to Bali from around pounds 630, and onwards by ferry.

september

ON THE first Sunday of the month, Venice stages the Regata Storica, the colourful gondola regatta, with its processions of beautiful boats old and new down to the Grand Canal, manned by Venetians in Renaissance costumes - followed by races along canals and in the lagoon in front of St Mark's. Thomson Breakaway (tel: 0181- 210 4500) offers three-night b&b breaks for pounds 304, including flights.

Beachwise, with the kids back at school, the Med is still good news - and in less fierce temperatures and with fewer crowds, you can combine sightseeing with basking. In Cyprus, Sunvil Holidays (tel: 0181-568 4499) can arrange for you to stay in village houses in the marvellous Akamas peninsula; prices are from pounds 400 a week and include flights and a car to explore hidden valleys and gorges, the monasteries and painted churches of Troodos Mountains, and to enjoy beach picnics on the unspoilt north- west coast. Sunvil also offers a similar deal for staying in farms on historically rich Sicily.

A wealth of treasures and warm seas, too, in southern Turkey, and specialist operators such as Tapestry Holidays (tel: 0181-235 7777), Anatolian Sky (tel: 0121-633 4018), Savile Tours (tel: 0171-625 3001) and Simply Turkey (tel: 0181-995 3883) can organise stays in wonderfully uncommercialised resorts.

These include Gumusluk, Kas, Kalkan and Gocek, from which you can branch out to discover the Lycian coast, noted for its rock tombs, and the sunken city of Kekov. Or Kale, accessible only by boat with only 250 inhabitants, where antiquities outnumber both buildings and people - and you can probably find a sarcophagus in your garden. In Kalkan, Savile Tours (tel: 0171- 625 3001) offers small villa accommodation from pounds 659 each for two people for a week, and from pounds 777 for two weeks, including flights and transfers.

If you want to tackle South America, save up for Journey Latin America's (tel: 0181-747 8315) mega-mega 69-day trip from Caracas to Tierra del Fuego, covering 22,000 miles of Venezuela and the Andes, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and the unknown delights of Colombia. The price of pounds 4,071 covers all flights and local buses and trains, but not board and lodging which is around pounds 20-pounds 38 a day.

october

THE NEW England Fall is at its spectacular best in October, with the foliage of northern Maine the first to turn, the colour spreading south as far as Rhode Island and Connecticut, but usually at its fieriest in wooded Vermont.

But don't worry, you won't miss any of it - local newspapers and radio stations give daily bulletins, and most states provide handy free helplines.

If you want to do it independently, fares to Boston are likely to cost pounds 160 return. The "Discover New England" tourist organisation (tel: 01732 742777) issues an info pack with Fall details. New England Country Homes (tel: 01798 869020) offers studios and cottages with car hire and flights from around pounds 700 for two weeks.

Mellow autumn sunshine is perfect for touring Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. It was the Pharaohs themselves who moved the Egyptian capital from Cairo to Thebes, now Luxor, because of its dry healthy winter climate. Egypt will be one of the last bargains of this millennium with low flight-only charter deals to Luxor and cut- price packages and cruises. The Sphinx, now restored after 12 years, and the recent openings of the tomb of Queen Nefertari, consort of the Great Ramses, and six other tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens are attracting a new wave of interest among the cognoscenti.

Bales Worldwide (tel: 01306 885923) offers a 14-day first-class cruise and holiday, "The Splendours of Egypt", which also covers flights and entrance fees, for pounds 1,320, and Thomson Holidays (tel: 0990 5023990) offers a budget b&b week for around pounds 350.

In East Africa, the grasses should still be low enough to enable good game-spotting, and even if the short rains arrive early, the transformation of parched plain into lush Eden is well worth the experience. Explore Worldwide (tel: 01252 760100) offers a variety of exciting expeditions to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe this month, and is introducing, for the first time in 1999, a 21-day Mozambique Discovery holiday to the country's wild coast and Bazaruto Archipelago National Park. The tour, which costs pounds 1,350, also includes South Africa's Kruger National Park and Zimbabwe.

november

DURING THE full moon of November, for the last 1,000 years or so, sleepy Pushkar, on the edge of the Great Indian Deserts, crams up to 20,000 people and twice as many camels for the extraordinary spectacle of the Camel Fair, which is both religious and social. Why not team up a visit there with a tour of Rajastan, with its traditional golden and pink cities - Jaipur and Jodphur, Udaipur with its shimmering lake, and the distant desert stronghold of Jaisalmer? Flights cost from pounds 446. Crisp, dry temperatures are ideal for trekking and driving in Morocco, the most exotic destination near home, but you have to head as far south as Marrakesh. Look out for off-the-beaten tours such as camel-trekking, staying in Berber villages, even go-karting, which are springing up in the High Atlas and Sahara. Apex flights to Marrakesh cost around pounds 330 from GB Airways (tel: 0345 222111); Made to Measure (tel: 0171-235 0123) offers five-day fly-drives from around pounds 636 including car hire; Best of Morocco (tel: 01380 828533) offers one to six-night camel treks for pounds 50-pounds 350, including full-board but excluding flights.

Looking for some beach-bashing? There are superb bargain deals for holidays and flights in the lull before Christmas. Surfing Mecca, Hawaii, can claim 30ft waves at Awimea Bay and Pipeline (flights around pounds 480). Australia,with thousands of miles of coastline, runs it a close second (Perth from pounds 470; Melbourne pounds 510).

There is great diving in the Maldives - nearly every atoll has its own dive-school. For escapists, "no news, no shoes", ultra laid-back Ari Beach runs an Open Water Course (nine dives including equipment) which you can pre-book from Kuoni (tel: 01306 743000) for around pounds 220, while a week's half-board there costs pounds 811 (including flights), pounds 22 each extra night.

december

STATELY VIENNA goes en fete for the whole season with its series of Advent markets, a 700-year-old tradition. Town Hall Square is the biggest, trees ablaze with lanterns, 150 stalls heaped with candles, decorations, toys, sausages and strudel.

Short breaks in Vienna, with b&b accommodation, cost around pounds 380 from Austria Travel (tel: 0171-222 2430).

Similar Christmas markets and short breaks to Nuremberg and medieval Rothenburg are available from Moswin Tours (tel: 0116-271 4982).

Fashionable shoppers cross the Atlantic to plunder factory outlets and shopping malls; New York positively crackles with its strolling Santas, crowds window-shopping at FAO Schwartz and Bloomingdales, while skaters take to the ice at Rockefeller Plaza; and Boston, Chicago and Canada's Toronto and Montreal are giving the Big Apple a run for its money. Minnesota claims the biggest mall, with 400 shops under one roof (heaven or hell?). Cresta Holidays (tel: 0161-927 7000) offers a wide range of three-day US breaks, to New York from around pounds 402, and Boston pounds 480.

If too much Yuletide cheer fills you with gloom, consider an alternative Christmas with the Neal's Yard Agency (tel: 07000 783 704) which specialises in holistic holidays, focusing on personal development, meditation and yoga. Christmas fare is largely vegetarian, with destinations including the Caribbean, India and Andalusia (prices not yet available). Or get out your wellies and escape on a conservation break, coppicing, cleaning paths and improving habitat in the UK countryside with BTCV - the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (tel: 01491 824602). Weekly tasks cost between pounds 50-pounds 60 for full-board and lodging. Instead of being the first to greet the new millennium, STA suggests being the last - by flying to Western Samoa for pounds 500. Happy Millennium!

All flights, unless stated, are booked through STA (tel: 0171-361 6262), Campus Travel (tel: 0171-730 8111) and Trailfinders (tel: 0171-938 3939).