Scottish-born and raised Alison Betts is senior lecturer in West Asian archeology at the University of Sydney. She has worked on field projects in Syria and Jordan, specialising in prehistory and the archeology of nomadic pastoralists. Her interests include stone tools, rock art and graffiti, nomadic peoples and ethno-archeology. For the past decade, she has worked as a tour guide with Odyssey Travel. www.odysseytravel.com.au.

Favourite food destination?
I have found that culinary surprises can be found in unlikely places: luscious rich buffalo cream in northern Iraq (great with the local apricot jam); oysters in Belfast (something about the cold Atlantic water); wild garlic in Xinjiang; and wild asparagus from the Aspromonte region in southern Italy. But my best recommendation to fellow travellers would have to be the fruit in Uzbekistan. Across Central Asia from the Caspian to western China ancient varieties of fruit have been preserved. They are picked sun-ripened and burst with sweetness and flavour. Apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, pears, apples, grapes, and of course mulberries from the trees whose leaves feed the silk worms along the famous Silk Roads. The vegetables too are delicious, especially the tomatoes, which make a beautiful pasta sauce with the local purple basil. Sadly, it is too far north for the olive tree.

Best retro experience?
The Hotel Baron in Syria. The hotel was established in 1909 as one of the premiere hotels in Aleppo. It has always been popular with archeologists, not perhaps surprising given its history of famous guests. T.E. Lawrence stayed there when he was working at the Carchemish excavations before he became famous for his war-time activities as Lawrence of Arabia, as did Agatha Christie when she was married to the famous archeologist Max Mallowan. Today it has an air of slightly faded splendour, but the rooms have recently been renovated and for anyone with a feel for history and atmosphere it is an absolute must. The guest list reads like a catalogue of the power brokers of the early 20th century. Baron Street, Aleppo.

Best experience afloat?
On tour with Odyssey Travel in Jordan our group took a day trip on an old style wooden ship from Aqaba across the Red Sea to Pharon Island on the Egyptian shore. We lounged on cushions around the deck and ate a delicious lunch. The sea was calm and the water around the island was turquoise blue. We rented snorkelling equipment and spent a wonderful hour in the water among the most wonderful corals and brilliantly coloured fish. It was a beautiful day and we saw dolphins jumping round the prow as we sailed home in the evening.

Most unusual accommodation?
Outside Ulan Bator, Mongolia has almost no hotels. Tourists are housed in tent camps. The tent, known locally as a ger, is a round, felt covered structure with walls made from a light wooden framework. The hotel camps usually set up their tents on concrete platforms and furnish them with comfortable beds, chairs, tables, and a stove. It is this last that creates perhaps the most unusual situation. The stove is lit at night before you go to bed so that you are nice and cosy as you undress. Since the temperature may well fall below freezing in the night, the lady traveller may be a little surprised to find a strange man in her bedroom around five in the morning relighting the fire so she can dress in comfort. Make sure you pack pyjamas.

Best shopping bargains?
I love bazaars. One of my favourites in Syria is the Aleppo souk, a medieval warren of alleys under arched stone roofs full of surprises, colour, delightful scents and less delightful odours. In the narrow streets you may brush against silver pendants, soap or sheep carcases. There are tailors, goldsmiths, seed merchants and lingerie salesmen, homewares, shoes and ice cream. In Uzbekistan the Bukhara bazaar is really a maze of little booths distributed around the Old City. Here, among the blue tiled domes and minarets, you can buy beautiful hand embroideries known as suzanis or lovely scarves in myriad gleaming colours made from locally spun and woven silk. I also love the Hongqiao Pearl Market in Beijing. You have to bargain hard but there are hundreds of stalls over three floors where you can find lovely jewellery and the shopkeepers will make up almost anything to your design. There is a charming two-girl tailoring booth there as well so you can get an outfit to match your necklace or a pair of earrings to match your new dress.

Favourite place to recharge?
A couple of years ago my husband and I treated ourselves to a trip to Bali. Ever since I saw Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Bali I wanted to hang around flower strewn rock pools on a tropical island. Bali was magical but the flower-strewn rock pools were a bit harder to source. One evening I came back to the room to change and found that my husband had tipped the lad in charge of our room to collect basketfuls of pale pink frangipani blossoms to fill the bathtub for me. It was wonderful, as was the rest of the mystical island of Bali. Our hotel was excellent and I would definitely recommend it. Beachside, pool, luxurious private cabins, spa, good restaurant, luscious tropical grounds and fantastic entertainment. More: www.latavernahotel.com.

Travel gadget or accessory do you always pack?
My husband gave me a windup torch last year and I love it. I take it everywhere with me. People laugh when you wind as you walk but you never run out of batteries in remote locations and when the power fails you are the one laughing. When I am packing, I always take a supply of resealable plastic bags. My shampoo and toothpaste always seem to leak so they all go in sandwich bags. My shoes get wrapped in old plastic shopping bags and my dirty laundry queues up in larger freezer bags until I get to a suitable water supply.

A fantastic adventure or eco-adventure trip?
By far the best off-the-beaten-track trip I took was to the Mongolian Altai last year. After an invitation to visit a colleague on an expedition there fell through, I decided to go on my own anyway. I googled Mongolia and came up with a tour group that responded promptly and made up a special itinerary exactly covering my rather peculiar requests to visit the Mongolian Altai and look at archeological sites, on horseback if necessary. They asked me to pay in full up front to a bank account in New York, which involved a certain amount of faith and optimism, so that when I flew into Ulan Bator I was not really sure if I would find anyone waiting for me. I was wrong to worry, I had the best tour of my life. I had a charming young English-speaking guide all to myself. We rode for miles across the high mountains under snowy peaks. We saw wild swans, cranes dancing on the steppe and visited remote nomadic sites and cliffs covered in rock art. We ended up in a faraway valley camping below the snowline, guests of the Kazakh eagle hunters who live in the high Altai all year round. They ride out in winter with their birds after wolves. They allowed me to hold one of the eagles, the best experience yet. More: Black Ibex Expeditions; www.discovermongolia.mn.

Favourite overseas purchase?
I am very fond of the leather jackets worn by women in Uzbekistan in winter. The best ones are imported from Turkey. A good one in excellent soft leather will cost about $70 and the best part is that they come with bling. This ranges from discrete diamante stars on the buttons to lightning flashes, glistening inset panels and fully beaded collars at the more extreme end. I love them so much I now have two.

Funniest travel anecdote?
It turned out for the best, but it looked a little dicey at first. I was flying into Bahrain from Tashkent on a late night flight, carrying with me in my hand luggage a catalogue of the newly restored paintings from the Sistine Chapel. The florid show of cavorting nudes so shocked the Customs officer that he was on the point of arresting me for smuggling of pornography. Luckily I have sufficient basic Arabic to create a very loud fuss on the subject of sacred religious sites. The poor man was so startled that a colleague came rushing over to investigate and after some discussion they agreed to let me go. It was not the fault of the Customs officer by any means, just an unanticipated issue of cultural difference

Worst travel mishap?
I have been stung by scorpions, arrested naked at gunpoint (at least I was in my sleeping bag), driven some of the worst roads in the world, become benighted in backwoods brothels and had many other adventures too numerous to mention, but there is always something new to be learnt and the small kindnesses of strangers in times of difficulty is a reminder that, despite the bigger picture, common humanity is something we share no matter where in the world we live or how rich or poor we are.

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