This website (along with my Twitter account) has been neglected for the past month — not because there’s been no travel writing worth drawing to your attention but because I’ve been travelling myself, first in Ethiopia and then in Spain, on assignments you should be able to read about shortly in The Daily Telegraph.

You’ll be reading there, too, about this year’s short list for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, an award of £10,000 for “a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place”. The judges — the broadcaster Kate Adie, the writer and critic Mark Lawson and the Pakistan-born poet Moniza Alvi — are due to reveal their six shortlisted books by early in May and the winner will be announced at a dinner at the Travellers Club in London on May 23.

Once again, courtesy of the Royal Society of Literature, I’ll be running a competition in which the prize will be all six of the titles that were shortlisted last year. Details will appear soon, so keep an eye on Deskbound Traveller.