Travel Agenda: Ryanair launches new route; India Festival kicks off; Beyond Babylon: Art Trade and Diplomacy opens

Today...

Ryanair launches a new route from Edinburgh to Poland's third-largest city, Lodz (ryanair.com).

This week...

Amsterdam kicks off its two-week India Festival on Wednesday, which includes performances of Keralan dance, an exhibition of Bollywood posters, a performance by Nitin Sawhney and screenings of Ravi Shankar performances (indiafestival.nl). In London, meanwhile, Babylon: Myth and Reality opens at the British Museum on Thursday, bringing together relics of this mysterious Mesopotamian city (britishmuseum.org).

In the diary...

Continue the Babylonian theme in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Beyond Babylon: Art Trade and Diplomacy opens on 18 November. In Australia, a new luxury "rail cruise", the Southern Spirit, makes tracks on 25 November, with five routes traversing the mainland. The inaugural journey starts at Darwin and works its way through four states to Sydney over 13 days (thesouthernspirit.com.au). And in Atlanta, Starwood's urban-cool W brand is opening a new hotel in the district of Buckhead on 17 November.