With many European holiday destinations now part of the eurozone, even such traditionally inexpensive places as Portugal are experiencing steadily rising costs we take a look at the attractions of three countries where it is still possible to enjoy an exotic break without the extra baggage of a hefty price tag.

Morocco

Morocco is barely a four-hour flight from the UK but remains a world away. Barricaded by the towering Rif and Atlas mountain ranges, the country has held strong to the rich cultural texture of its indigenous Berber people. Step off the plane and you bid farewell to the predictabilities of Europe and embrace the differences of northern Africa.

Not that Europe is entirely absent. From Tangier, that centre of nineteenth century colonialism with its slightly languid air of half-remembered decadence, the desert trade routes direct you along the Atlantic coast to Casablanca, cosmopolitan and Humphrey Bogart famous. Casablanca is a mix of old and new. The clogging traffic jams and impoverished shanty towns give way to generous boulevards, parks and rows of impressive colonial architecture.

Here you will also find the fishing ports of Asalih and Essaouira, their whitewashed walls sparkling in the sunlight that reflects from the expanses of the open ocean. Morocco’s Atlantic seaboard is rimmed with fabulous sandy beaches and dotted with villages and old forts, sweeping up into verdant green valleys.

Away from the coast, you can delight in, as travellers down the centuries have done, the great cities of Marrakesh and Fes, the medinas a potourri of surprises that could occupy a decade’s worth of visits. Marrakesh is a maze of winding streets and alleys, designed, if designed at all, to encourage a meandering, distracted yet exhilarating stroll of discovery. Around each corner expect the unexpected: snake charmers, turbaned potion sellers, water peddlers advertising their wares to the crack of castanets, souqs that are an oasis of cool and shade in the heat, stalls offering fresh cooked snails, and carpet shops by the hundred.

Real escape, though, comes with the interior of the country. The dazzling peaks of the Atlas mountains, beaded with trails from one Berber village to the next, the houses flat-roofed and earthen, interspersed with terraced gardens and walnut groves, will take the breath away. Running down from the Atlases are a series of enchanted valleys like the Draa, a filament of orchards, red clay casbahs, lit, in the evenings, by a suffused, soft-focus purplish sunset. If a sense of adventure is upon you, you could strike out for the eastern side of the Atlases and the spectacular Tidra Gorge, a cathedral of a rift in the mountains, its pink and grey cliffs vaulting hundreds of feet up towards the blue skies.

Egypt

Think Egypt, think pyramids. But the truth is that Egypt is so much more even than these marvels of the ancient world. To the astonishing legacy of the dynasties of Pharoahs you can add the heritage of the Greeks, the Romans and the Arabs.

Cairo is swirl of sounds, scents and sights, its hubbub of modernity – wailing traffic and urban developments – encircling a mediaeval centre that, within a couple of steps, conducts you through a palimpsest of the past. You can either immerse yourself in the pulsating hustle and bustle of the hawkers and the traders or you can sit quietly at a small café table, refreshing yourself with a sugary sherbet and watching the morning and history hurry by.

You can time travel even more immense distances still by taking the short trip out to the west of the city and Giza and its pyramids, colossal 4,000-year-old geometries, their stark glory brought into sharper relief when set against the uniformity of the desert.

Upriver lie more wonders. At Luxor, the splendours of the ancient Egyptians appear in greater numbers and monumentalism if that were possible. Rightly described as the world’s greatest open air museum, the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnack stand within the modern city. Just across the Nile are the tombs of the west bank Necropolis, including the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.

Head south to Aswan – travelling by felucca, the traditional sail boats of the Nile, is the best way to traverse this eternal, life-bringing ribbon of water as it wends its majestic route – and you will be treated to yet further architectural testimonies to the visionary grandeur and the mysteries of antiquity of the Pharaohs and their armies of priests and workers.

To the west of the Nile delta spreads another expanse: the sands of the deserts that eventually wash out to the Sahara. The landscape is broken by the flowerings of green that crouch, crowned by the fronds of palm trees, around the springs that irrigate the oases, and by eerie outcrops of rock that stand sentinel over the whispering dunes.

As if mirroring the rolling, horizonbound deserts, to the east you come to the Red Sea, with its aquamarine waters, illuminated everywhere from below by the brilliant flourishes of colour of the coral reefs that encrust the seabed. Should you wish a retreat from the carnival of activity that is urban Egypt, you will discover age-old serenity among the Coptic monasteries that rise along the Red Sea coast and its hinterland.

Turkey

Turkey is a holiday for everyone. If it is history you are after, where better to visit than the land gave us the Trojan wars, that has witnessed the coming together of civilisations, that counts Alexander the Great among those who helped to shape it and that, at the court of the Ottomans, produced an empire that spanned both east and west. There are said to be more Greek ruins in Turkey than in Greece; and more Roman ruins than in Italy.

If, on the other hand, you want to lounge, relax and do nothing more than escape the pressures of life back home, then Turkey boasts an abundance of golden beaches, the waters of the Mediterranean splashing carelessly onto the sand, and fabulous hotels where you can enjoy the pampering of a lifetime.

On Turkey’s Aegean coast you can while your time at such historically resonant sites as the excavated ruins of what was Troy. After that a trip to Ephesus, home to possibly the finest preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean, its temples and churches a glorious measure of its importance to both Roman religion and Christian faith, should be on the itinerary. Then may be on to Pergamum, not as visited as Ephesus but almost as rich in history.

Alternatively, you can set your sights on the beaches and fishing villages of the Mediterranean coast, with their lush orange groves, orchards of pomegranates, fragrant pine trees, their coves, inlets, turquoise waters and cliff sides into which are carved, here and there, the columns of temples long since deserted by the acolytes who once worshipped in them.

The team at Tickets Anywhere can tailor and plan a Moroccan, Egyptian or Turkish holiday of a lifetime – or the holiday of a lifetime anywhere else – specifically to suit your wishes, making sure that it includes the sights you want to see and the places you want to visit.