If the start of a new year stimulates reflection, the dawn of a fresh decade demands some serious thought – specifically when it comes to all-important travel plans.

New flight routes, anniversary celebrations, and exciting hotel openings plunge destinations into the spotlight. Some other places are simply having their moment, right now.

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Sharing approximately 98% DNA with humans, chimpanzees are intelligent, emotional and have a sense of humour. They also, crucially, feel loss and pain.

In West Africa, bushmeat poaching and illegal pet trade have been catastrophic for the species, now classified as critically endangered in this region, and many baby orphans are left with nowhere to go.

Eager to give them a chance in life, Jimmy and Jenny Desmond have turned their Liberian home into a rescue centre, where they now care for 21 chimps.

Illuminated by flickers of candlelight, an elderly pilgrim squats in the mud, reciting passages from a well-thumbed, leather-bound copy of the Old Testament.

Around him, figures swaddled in ghostly-white linens are stacked tightly together, covering every crack, crevice and precipice of Lalibela’s ancient rock-hewn churches. Having walked for days, the exhausted bodies lay stiller than corpses in a mortuary; but when sunlight spears the horizon in six hours’ time, heralding Ethiopia’s Christian Orthodox Christmas Day, this place will be very much alive.

Overrun by his offspring, Olerai grunts, growls and grinds his chiselled jaw, but is far too weary to summon a roar, as excitable lion cubs tug at his tail.

Raising an eyelid to survey the granite outcrop where his restless pride has gathered, the wind rustles through the formidable male’s mane and sun glints where crown jewels should shine. But ruling a dominion is tiring work, and a king surely deserves his sleep.