Travelling with writer Alexander Mccall Smith

The novelist escapes the Scottish winter for the Diggi Palace of Jaipur and walks in the Himalayas

IF YOU LIVE at a latitude of 56º N, as I do in Edinburgh, then the early, somewhat dark part of the year is a good time to find an excuse to go away – and 27º N will do just fine. That happens to be the latitude of Jaipur in Rajasthan, where each January the world’s greatest literary love-in takes place. The Jaipur Literature Festival has, over the past decade, become one of the most popular literary gatherings in the world, and hundreds of thousands flock to the city’s famous Diggi Palace and its surrounding stages.

This year, after Jaipur, my wife and I went on to Nepal on a private mission that I had long been thinking about. Some years ago, as the executor of a relative’s will, I had dealings with a British charity, The Gurkha Welfare Trust, and they had suggested to me that I might go out and see what had been done with that relative’s gift. At long last we made the trip and found ourselves in Kathmandu. From there we boarded a Yeti Airlines plane and travelled up to Pokhara, the gateway city to the Himalayas, where I spoke to aged Gurkhas – one of whom was a sprightly 105-year-old – and saw the welfare work the Trust does to help pay back these brave men, from rebuilding houses damaged in an earthquake to helping with water schemes.

That took a couple of days, and then there was time for a four-day trek in the Himalayas. That sounds more arduous than it was – there are excellent options for softies, with trails of only three or four hours a day before you arrive at the next lodge and sit down in front of a comforting fire. From where you sit, you can look up at the glorious mountain, Annapurna South, and pinch yourself... Until Yeti Airlines flies you back to Kathmandu, and to reality.

RETURNING TO REALITY was, for me, a return to the day-to-day task of being a serial novelist. Years ago the American writer Armistead Maupin told me not to do as he had done and write a serial novel in a newspaper. I ignored his advice, and ended up writing the Scotland Street series, initially published each day in The Scotsman newspaper. I am currently working on volume 13 in this saga, and so I had to catch up fairly quickly when I returned from Nepal. I have just sent one of the characters off to Aberdeen, to get her out of the way. This led to howls of protest from readers in Aberdeen, who say that their city is not as cold as people believe it to be. Nor are they unduly careful with their money. Perish the thought. Definitely not the case.

AND AS THE DAYS draw out – oh, lovely thought – my wife and I shall go up to our house in Argyll. It is very remote, and at high tide the sea is some 30ft from our front door. We are surrounded by deer, and there are pine martens and otters conducting their timorous business on the shore in front of the house, or around our deer-fenced vegetable patch. A waterfall tumbles down the mountain. I draw that water down in a pipe, and that is what we drink and wash in. When we are here, I forget the world and its troubles, and the divisions that have made this last year such a sad and bruising one for this lovely country of ours.

Alexander Mccall Smith’s new Detective Varg novel, The Department of Sensitive Crimes, is out now (Little, brown, £18.99)

Armistead Maupin told me not to write a serial novel in a newspaper. I ignored his advice