After a series of quarrels with his wife, an Indian man left his home to live in a tree and has been there for the past 15 years. Kapila Pradhan, 45, a resident of Nagajhara village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, now lives in a tree-house 7. 6m (25 feet) above the ground. “Sometimes the villagers feed him during festive occasions,” says a local resident Sukanta Dakua. Cyclones, rain and wild elephants and monkeys forced him to move to a tree closer to the edge of the forest, near a village.

According to the Transportation Security Administration Air travellers in the United States will soon be allowed to carry small scissors and tools on planes, but will face more random security searches that focus more on detecting explosives at airports as part of an effort to thwart potential terrorists.

The new focus on random searches will include more additional screenings of passengers and their bags at security checkpoints. While in the past passengers have been selected for extra or “secondary” screening when they check in for their flight, that will be expanded to checkpoints as well. The secondary checks will be based on behaviour patterns and a random pattern selected by the screeners.

TSA screeners will also use a different pat-down procedure, to improve their ability to detect nonmetal weapons and explosive devices that may be carried on the body. Pat-down searches will now include the arms and legs. But oh, none of this is supposed to cause any major delays.

Kew Palace in south-west London once a royal palace that was once home to “mad” King George III is to open to the public after being shut for 10 years. The king used Kew as a place to convalesce during his bouts of mental illness, which are believed to have been caused by the hereditary disease porphyria.

From May 2006, visitors will be able to tour the palace, which is in the grounds of Kew’s famous Royal Botanic Gardens. The palace was a royal residence from 1728 to 1818, and in the early 19th Century was the home of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

The newly opened palace will show an exhibition of Georgian life, including literature, music, horticulture, architecture and astronomy. The second floor of the palace has never been seen before by the public, and has been hardly altered since it was decorated for the Georgian princesses in the early 19th Century.

The Beetle read a touching account from the BBC News on-line about women in Afghanistan having freedoms but not being free to enjoy these. This is what it said: Girls can go to school, at least in the big cities like Herat and Kabul, and a fragile peace now exists in a war-torn country that has known only brutality and chaos since 1979. But some things, it seems, have not really changed at all.

Mamozai’s Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Driving School was one of the first driving schools in Afghanistan to allow women to enrol. The Taleban thought the idea of teaching women how to drive was “satanic”, but Mr Mamozai’s school now has more than 200 female graduates.

Even so, the women are often told to “sit up like a man” by their male instructors as they navigate the precarious back-roads of Kabul, and to “stop driving like a woman. ”

But then that is hardly surprising. Most of the instructors are ex-Taleban and they do not really think women should drive at all. They certainly would not allow their own wives to drive

Need to convert currency?

Take a look at The Globetrotters Currency Converter – get the exchange rates for 164 currencies The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet – create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website:

Mutual Aid

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all but essential travel to Eritrea. We advise against all travel to the border areas with Ethiopia and Sudan. In recent weeks, restrictions placed on the UN Monitoring force by the Government of Eritrea have further heightened tensions along the Ethiopia/Eritrea border. This advice includes Tesseney, near the Sudan border. We also advise against travel in the area north of Afabet in the Sahel region and along one road in the west of the country (see Local Travel Section below for details).

In November 2005, UN agencies in Eritrea withdrew families of their personnel in response to increased tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea over their disputed border. On 6 December 2005, the Government of Eritrea told UN Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) staff from USA, Canada, Europe and the Russian Federation to leave the Mission within 10 days. The relocation of these personnel to Ethiopia is now complete.

You should be aware that there is a continuing threat to Western, including British, targets from terrorism in Eritrea as there is in other countries in East Africa and the Horn.

You should be aware that travel restrictions may limit our ability to offer immediate consular assistance outside Asmara, Keren, Dekemhare, Mendeferra and Massawa.

Travel options to and from Asmara are limited following the cancellation of scheduled flights between Asmara and Nairobi.

Thinking of visiting the Horn of Africa? You along with millions of others may go hungry.

The United Nations food agency (FAO) has warned that millions of people could face starvation in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The FAO say around 11 million need food aid.

A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we’ll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world.

Travel Sized Bites

A Brisbane woman has been killed in a shark attack at Amity Point, North Stradbroke Island near Brisbane. She was swimming about 15m (49ft) offshore when she was attacked in water which had become murky and muddy after a recent storm. Police believe that possibly three bull sharks could have attacked the young woman as they are known to be aggressive during mating season. Before you start to worry, let’s put this into perspective: there have been 10 fatal shark attacks in Australian waters in the past five years.

A tip from Mac’s friend, world traveller Stanley Sagara who travels around the world giving used glasses to the poor of the world (his next trip is to Ethiopia) gave me this travel tip: photocopy your travellers cheques as well as first page of your passport, drivers license, all your important papers. (This tip would be good even if not travelling. ) He suggests looking at back of papers to see if there is important information there as to how to get items replaced etc. and photocopy that side too so you know who issued cheques as well as who to notify in the event of loss or theft.

In December 2005, a drunken male passenger on a flight from northern England to the Spanish tourist island of Tenerife was dropped off at a small island off the African coast after he swore at the cabin crew. Press reported that the plane’s captain decided to leave the man at Porto Santo, just 10 miles long and four miles wide, a volcanic outcrop in the Atlantic, after he became abusive when he was refused more alcohol. (The island does have a few hotels, so he wasn’t left to sleep on the beach in case you were worried. ) Needless to say, police met the man at the airport who is due to appear in court in mainland Portugal in January.

To ensure UK travellers are fully prepared for your travels moving into 2006 please be aware that from 1st January 2006, UK residents travelling in Europe will require a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC). This will allow you to benefit from free or reduced-cost medical care when travelling in an EEA country or Switzerland.

The EHIC replaces the E111 and is free of charge. For further information on the introduction of the EHIC and on how to apply for an EHIC, see: www. dh. gov. uk/travellers

If you are found to be a stowaway on a ship, the ship owners are obliged by law to bear the costs to send you home.

Unfortunately for seven Tanzanian stowaways who recently boarded a ship sailing to South America at Mombassa in Kenya, three Ukrainian sailors allegedly forced the seven stowaways to jump overboard. Two of the seven Tanzanian stowaways are believed to have drowned while five managed to swim to safety, say police.

Saturday 4th March 2006, 10. 30am – 4. 00pm at the newsroom The Guardian

60 Farringdon Rd

London EC1R 3GA

Cost: £89. 99 (inc VAT)

A day of two intensive workshops:

Travel Writing – How To Do It, and How Not To with Dea Birkett, Guardian columnist and author of Serpent in Paradise and Off the Beaten Track.

Fact, Fiction and Creating a Traveller’s Tale with Rory Maclean, author of Falling for Icarus and Stalin’s Nose.

The workshops include practical writing sessions. Participants should bring pen and paper – they will be expected to write! The emphasis is – whether you are a beginner or already have some writing experience – on developing skills which can be applied to both articles and books. Our aim is that, by the end of the day, each of you will have the tools to produce a publishable piece of travel writing.

Already done some travel writing? Contact travelworkshops@deabirkett. com for details of the Travel Writing Masterclass on Saturday March 18th 2006. Or book the Workshop and Masterclass together and save over £20.

Survival International, a London-based organisation which accuses the Botswana government of ethnic cleansing against the Kalahari Bushmen has come under fierce criticism for allegedly distorting the true picture. One of the largest Bushmen groups in Botswana, the Kuru Family of Organisations, claims that is untrue. “There’s no genocide taking place, there’s no ethnic cleansing taking place,” said Braam Le Roux, a coordinator of the group.

Stephen Corry, director of Survival said: “Ethnic cleansing, yes. Genocide, it’s a question of looking at the term. We are very close to saying this is outright genocide, although the government has not, as yet, outright killed people.” Survival International works with around 700 Bushmen, either evicted from, or facing eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, their ancestral land for 20,000 years.

Stephen Corry’s understanding of genocide is the forced removal of the Bushmen, which he believes will lead to their eventual destruction as a distinct people.

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites

Norway’s Directorate for Cultural Heritage has begun a unique program of setting up signs to highlight historical landmarks – underwater. The signs will be placed in order to discourage vandalism and plundering. About 30 shipwrecks in southern Norway will get the familiar preservation sign from the directorate, to help divers appreciate – and respect – some of the country’s less obvious attractions. Signs will be placed at depths of 10-30 meters (33-98 feet), and will point out wrecks and cargo that are particularly vulnerable to plundering.

Jon from the UK writes, in connection with a travel warning issued by the UK government about the Philippines:

I’ve visited the Philippines 3 times this year and travelled widely. I think our FO is overdoing it with its travel warning. The Sulus, Basilan and parts of Mindanao are certainly to be avoided but the rest of the country is pretty safe. Local skirmishes do break out between anti- government forces and the army but you will be stopped from getting too close to such a situation, in the unlikely event that you are close. This happened to me in Mindanao 2 weeks ago.

I have always felt pretty safe and found most people helpful and friendly. I believe the risk of street crime is substantially lower than over here. There is remarkably little begging and hassling, especially considering the low standard of living of many people. Large scale corruption is a way of life, led by the President and her family, but is need not be the concern of tourists. In short, do not be afraid of going to the Philippines on holiday, just avoid southern Mindanao and the Sulu region.