The festival is a 12-minute ride from the city centre on subway

The festival is a 12-minute ride from the city centre on subway U2/U7 to Messestadt West. Open 9am to sunset, admission €14 (£10) adults, €3 (£2.15) children (includes travel on the underground).WHAT CAN I SEE IN MUNICH? The red-brick late-15th-century cathedral on Frauenplatz is a good place to orient oneself. To the north-east is the vast English Garden in which Unity Mitford shot herself on the day war was declared; it extends for miles out of the city. If you have only a day, the three Pinakothek galleries on Arcisstrasse should not be missed; the Old (Alte) Pinakothek displays works by old masters from the 14th-18th centuries, and has a fine collection of Rubens Open 10am-5pm except Sunday, admission €5 (£3.50).

Onward travel from Moscow to Novosibirsk, and visa arrangements, were made by Asla Travel Group (01480 433783; ). Flights between Moscow and Novosibirsk are available from Aeroflot and Siberia (0870 240 6106) for around £300 return.FURTHER INFORMATIONBritish passport holders require a visa to visit Russia, which can be obtained from the Embassy of The Russian Federation (020-7229 8027; ), Consular Section, 5 Kensington Palace, Gardens, London, W8 4QS These cost from £33. Altai Republic ( ).. IN A NUTSHELL?The southern state of Bavaria covers almost a fifth of Germany and conjures up images of dark forests, lakes, beer halls, “mad” King Ludwig and the Alps. It includes all transport from the pick-up point in the central Russian city of Novosibirsk, all meals, hotel, camping, equipment and guides It does not include flights. The 2005 expedition is now fully booked, but those keen to travel this year can register on a waiting list.The writer travelled with British Airways (0870 850 9850; ), which flies from London to Moscow Domodedovo from £225 return. For children, there are activities and playgrounds and swimming in the self-cleaning lake Needless to say, there will be beer gardens galore.

Until 9 October, the landscaped park of 30,000 trees will have 25 changing displays with millions of flowers. The region escaped heavy bombing during the Second World War and consequently has many unspoilt towns that still have a medieval feel, with town walls encircling streets of timber-framed buildings with steep pitched roofs. It offers the best walking and cycling country in Germany, and a wealth of museums and galleries. Its capital, Munich, is said to have the best quality of life of any German city, and its excellent tram and U-Bahn system, and cycle and walking routes – some beside the river Isar – make it a pleasure to explore.
WHY NOW?A good reason to start your visit in Munich is the biennial national garden festival (00 49 89 41 2005 41; ), which opened on Thursday on the site of the city’s old airport. Beginning in July, the expedition takes place in four two-week slots, running back to back.The cost is £1,150 per person (this price is based on travel in 2006) per two-week slot, with two thirds of that contribution going directly back into the project. THE BEST WAY TO SEE SPOTSGETTING THEREBiosphere Expeditions (01502 583085; ) organises four annual trips to the Siberian Altai in Russia.

It’s hard to imagine a two-week holiday could be more uniquely spent – mastering Russian phrases, learning how to navigate miles of uninhabited grassland in a 4WD and, of course, becoming able to identify mammal droppings. As we sit around the campfire, a purple shadow drawing over the steppe, another Siberian night folds over us and I decide that while these aren’t exactly transferable life skills they are nonetheless experiences that will stay with me forever. Faced with another morning of high-altitude trekking with not more than a marmot burrow as evidence of wildlife it’s no small joy to know that we’re working on the barely visited frontiers of Central Asia – indeed on the frontiers of conservation itself. Calling in on local herdsmen for a cup of sweet tea and a slice of bread and salty cheese is one of the more agreeable parts of fieldwork. The relationship Tessa has built up with these nomadic farming families has proved invaluable both in terms of the local knowledge she’s gained about animal sightings and poaching, and the co-operation and trust it builds between locals and scientists.

The eventual hope is that the two can work alongside one another to protect the local environment, rather than hunt and farm it.That this is a possibility, albeit a long way off, serves to bolster the enthusiasm of the amateur conservationist like myself. Tessa takes us across the steppe, an hour’s bumpy drive from base camp towards the mountainous border with Mongolia, where we find Kompy’s yurt (the felt tents favoured by nomadic Asian farmers). Overgrazing by local farmers and poaching threatens not just the leopards but their habitat and prey species too,” she says.That’s all very well but for the amateur scientist, a little living evidence goes a long way when it comes to finding the inspiration for hours of trekking up barren mountains in search of shit.As it turns out this comes in human form, in the shape of a Kazakh herdsman named Kompy Petrovitch. Even down where our tents are pitched, at 2,200 metres, the vegetation is sparse. But as we climb towards the snow line, inch by painful inch due to altitude-addled lungs, the grass and scarce alpine flowers all but vanish. But by the end of the day, with not a little supervision from Volodymyr, we’ve recorded several signs of mammal life and are even treated to a sighting of two Siberian ibex (mountain goat).These sightings, it soon becomes clear, are rare This is not the cuddly side of conservation work. The temperatures veer between minus 5C overnight to 30C during the day, and a “sighting” here is defined as the slightest sign of life.