Where is hot in January, and how far you have to fly for it

January is the month when the sun is weakest over Europe, and that sets a firm limit on how close to home you can find real warmth. Southern Spain and the Algarve are mild, often bright and pleasant for walking, but nobody sensible would call them hot. The Canary Islands, four hours or so away off the coast of Africa, are the nearest place where a January afternoon is reliably warm, and even there the evenings call for a jumper. Anything beyond that means crossing an ocean or a continent.

So the honest way to choose is to start with the flight. Each extra hour in the air buys something: more heat, more certainty of sun, a stronger sense of having gone somewhere else. Here are three directions, in rough order of distance, all with the advantage that January falls in their dry season.

West: the Caribbean, about nine hours

The eastern Caribbean is the nearest place to Britain that feels properly tropical in January, and Barbados, about nine hours from London on a direct flight, is the usual way in. This is the heart of the dry season, which runs roughly from December to May. Days are reliably warm, the trade winds take the edge off the heat, and the rain, when it comes, tends to fall in short showers that clear within the hour. The hurricane season, from June to November, is safely over.

The pleasure of a Caribbean winter is how different the islands are from one another, Dutch, French, British and Spanish in their history, at a distance from each other that a ship can cover overnight. Ambassador's Caribbean Explorer: Tropical Isles flies out from Heathrow to join the ship at Bridgetown for fourteen nights. Its ports include St Vincent, St Lucia, Antigua, Martinique and Guadeloupe, the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, and Road Town in the British Virgin Islands. It sails in January and February.

Further west: the Yucatán, ten hours or more

Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula is a little further, ten hours or more from London. In January it has the same dry, warm weather as the Caribbean, with cooler nights inland. It is also flat, which is a large part of why Explore Worldwide runs a cycling trip there. Cycle Mexico, The Yucatán Peninsula, eight nights, runs between Cancún and Isla Mujeres, the Maya city of Chichén Itzá, the colonial towns of Mérida, Izamal and Valladolid, and the Gulf coast at Progreso and Río Lagartos, with a cenote on the way. January is one of its months, and it is a good one for pedalling.

East: Kerala and Sri Lanka, eleven hours and up

Going east, the distances are longer and the reward is a warmth that is almost guaranteed. Southern India and Sri Lanka are at their best in January. The rains of the north-east monsoon have mostly cleared the south-west of both. The air is warm without being punishing, and the hills inland are cool enough to sleep well. Reaching them takes eleven hours or more, often with a change.

In Kerala, Explore Worldwide's A Taste of Southern India, eight nights, starts in the old trading port of Kochi, with its Chinese fishing nets and the spice warehouses of Mattancherry. It then climbs to the tea estates around Munnar and the forest of Periyar National Park at Thekkady. In January the coast is hot and the hills are mild. Tea pickers and the occasional elephant are more likely sightings than rain.

Sri Lanka's weather is more complicated, because two monsoons take turns, but in January the south and west and the hill country are generally dry. Explore Worldwide's Cycle Sri Lanka, thirteen nights, takes that dry season by bicycle: from Negombo through the ancient cities of Dambulla, Sigiriya and Polonnaruwa, with the elephants at Minneriya, up through Kandy to the tea country around Nuwara Eliya, and on to the wildlife of Udawalawe.

The honest arithmetic

None of this is a quick fix. A week in the Caribbean, with nine hours each way, is a long way to go for a short break, and the east is better kept for two weeks or more. If what you want is simply to be warm for a few days, the Canaries are hard to beat for the time spent getting there. If you want January to feel like another season altogether, the long flight is the price, and on a grey morning in Britain it can look a very reasonable one.