Where to go in October, as the year turns two ways at once

October does not behave like a single month so much as three different arguments happening at once. In the Mediterranean, the sea is still warm enough for an evening on deck while the crowds have thinned to nothing. In the eastern United States, a slow-burning change in the trees turns whole hillsides red and gold for a few precise weeks. And on the Indian subcontinent, the monsoon finally lifts, and a five-month run of clear, comfortable weather begins. None of the three has much to do with the others, which is rather the point of October: it rewards people going in very different directions.

Malta, and the ships that turn east

Valletta makes an unusually good base for a Mediterranean cruise once the summer season proper has ended, not least because Fred. Olsen's October sailings from the Grand Harbour use it as a springboard into waters that would otherwise mean flying much further east. One route runs to the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro, one of the most dramatic natural harbours in Europe, with a route that also threads the Dalmatian coast of Croatia on the way. The scale of Valletta itself, a fortress city built by the Knights of St John after the Great Siege of 1565, is worth the stopover alone, its bastions still standing sentry over the harbour that made the island worth besieging in the first place. From Valletta the ship turns north-east towards the Adriatic rather than deeper into the eastern Mediterranean, which keeps the whole itinerary inside a comfortable ten nights.

New England, on fire

Nothing in Britain quite prepares you for an American autumn. The maples of New England turn a red that borders on alarming, and the phenomenon moves south and downhill through October with enough predictability that entire tours are built around chasing it: Boston and Cape Cod, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the covered bridges and dairy farms of Vermont, before the trip turns north into Quebec and Ontario, taking in Niagara Falls, and finishes with New York at its most agreeable, before the winter properly arrives.

India, once the monsoon has gone

The monsoon that soaks northern India through the summer months typically withdraws by early October, and what follows is widely reckoned to be the best stretch of the Indian year for visitors: warm days, cool evenings, and skies clear enough to see the marble of the Taj Mahal properly rather than through a summer haze. A first trip through the so-called Golden Triangle, taking in Delhi, Jaipur's pink-sandstone old city and Agra, is a sensible introduction to a country that rewards a slower return later, and October's weather is as forgiving an entry point as the country offers.

Jaipur earns its nickname honestly: much of the old city was painted a warm terracotta pink in the nineteenth century to welcome the Prince of Wales, and the colour has been maintained by law ever since. Agra, further east, means the Taj Mahal, the marble mausoleum built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and a stop at Ranthambore, a former royal hunting ground turned tiger reserve, on the way, gives the itinerary a chance of wildlife as well as architecture. None of it is guaranteed, tigers least of all, but October's clear skies at least give you the best possible view of what is there.

Choosing your October

If you want the sea and history in equal measure, with the crowds of high summer already gone, Malta's autumn sailings are the pragmatic choice, and the price of a longer flight is one you do not have to pay. If a single, spectacular natural event is what you are after, New England's fall colour is worth planning a whole trip around, and the window for it is genuinely narrow; wait too long and you are left with bare branches and a coach full of disappointed leaf-peepers. If you are considering India for the first time, October is when the country stops fighting you and starts showing you why people keep going back, without the heat of April or the rain of August standing in the way.