Best places to visit in January

The valley empties after the first week and the city returns to the people who live in it. The markets are still full of the season and the palenques in the hills are working. Nothing about the days changes when the visitors go; only the queues do.

This is the fortnight the beach actually works: warm sea, no afternoon storms, and evenings you can sit out in. South Beach is at its best when the buildings are the point rather than the nightlife. The rest of Florida is cheaper and less interesting.

The monsoon that shuts the west coast for half the year has gone, and the water off Kata and Kamala is flat. Boats to the Phi Phi islands run every day, which is not true from May to October. This is the island the brochures photograph.

January sits between the rains, which is when the grass is low and the animals are easy to find. The city is a base rather than a destination, and the Rift Valley starts ninety minutes west. Hell's Gate is the rare park you are allowed to cross on foot.

Australia's best eating city spends late January full of people who came for something else entirely. The laneways are busy, the trams run late, and the parks along the Yarra are the venue. Book the room before the draw, not after.

Hokkaido takes the Siberian wind across the Sea of Japan and gets famously dry snow out of it. The resorts an hour out are the reason to come; the city is where you eat afterwards. February brings the ice sculptures and everybody who wants to see them.

On the ninth the city gives itself over to a procession that takes more than a day to travel four miles. It is barefoot, enormous, and unlike anything else in Asia. The rest of the month is the dry season, which is the only comfortable time to be here.

The heat is gone and the city is walkable from morning to night, which is true of very few months here. The seventh is a national holiday and the churches in Abbasiya are the event. Upper Egypt is at its peak, so book the boat before the flight.

January is when Argentina goes on holiday, and the capital is what remains behind. Restaurants close for the month, the commercial theatre decamps to the coast, and the heat sits on the streets. The numbers are fine; the city is somewhere else.

Everything else about January is right, and then the cool season traps the smoke under the city and holds it there. Schools have shut over it, and the city's own advice is to work from home. It is the busiest tourist month and the least breathable one.

January is peak Golden Triangle and the month north India disappears under fog for days at a time. Airports drop to their lowest-visibility landing category, trains run hours late, and the marble is a rumour. The air underneath the fog is the worse problem.

The rain here is an afternoon event rather than a washout, and it is not the reason to stay away. From the turn of the year the monsoon current pushes Java's plastic onto the west-coast beaches, by the tonne. Volunteers clear it and the next tide brings more.

Cold fronts run down the Gulf all winter and the Yucatán catches the tail of them. When one lands the harbourmaster closes the port to small boats, which is every reef trip and every island ferry. The hotel is fine; the reason you came is cancelled.