Elanso

I'm nosing around for some accommodation in Leh - high high high in the Indian part of the Himalayas - and remembering when I was last there, at the end of September. The gardens were still bright with sunflowers and cornflowers and poppies, but as soon as the sun dipped below the mountains I would be scrabbling through my backpack for ever-more elaborate sleep outfits. The Tibetan family who ran my guesthouse thought I was hilarious. 'It's not even cold yet!' they would scoff as I begged for my morning bucket of water to be heated. By the last few days of September, I was spending the nights under siege in my unheated room - sleeping in hat and coat and thermals and socks and zero-degree sleeping bag, and still so bone-chilled I was awake all night (the starscapes outside my 17 windows were some consolation).
I've been driven from Leh in September, Kathmandu in December, and Edinburgh in July by a constitutional aversion to the cold. Of course, there are some hardier souls who love nothing better than to feel their very capillaries crackling under the touch of Jack Frost - it makes them feel alive, I'm told - but for those of us who would rather feel alive in a less hypothermic way, travel can turn into a series of ingenious contortions to beat out the chill. Take these tips from a good citizen of Baguio, in the Philippines. Hairdryers under the clothes and heating your room with a toaster oven - hmmm. Perhaps I should reroute this trip to Jamaica.

- Cherry Washington