I was turfed off to board at Sutton Valence School at the age of eight (no problems there as I saw it as an opportunity for eluding parental control). One evening, following what was laughingly called "dinner", I was sitting at my regular place in our "common room" doing my homework when I had what might be described as a prophetic moment. My favourite subject was geography, and there on the left-hand page was a grainy black and white photo of the Great Wall of China. That, I thought, does not exist because I know I shall never see it. After that moment, China has never left me.

LONDON

My early days in London saw me heading off to the Tate Gallery every Sunday afternoon for the sole purpose of picking up girls – an important function of the art museum, in my view. But in between that activity there was ample time for Barnett Newman, Franz Kline and all those great expansive New York School pictures. Their overwhelming confidence was inspiring, but now not even they can quite take precedence over Giovanni Bellini's altarpiece in the church of San Zaccaria​ in Venice.

PARIS

Our first overseas family holiday was to Paris and the sheer thrill of being able to taste real street life has remained firmly etched into my mind. Paris was rather more colourful than suburban London at that time. My brother and I would drift surreptitiously out of the hotel to sit in a street cafe and order beers … I was 12. What liberty.

BEIJING

In the waning throes of the Cultural Revolution, in 1972 Beijing was an overwhelming experience. Walking through the deserted Forbidden City in the gloom and sullen greyness of Beijing in early winter conjured unforgettable images of its history. One day I was crossing the main shopping street, Wangfujing, with a sombre Mao-suit clad official. As we threaded our way through a surging mass of silent bicycles, with not a car, bus or truck to be seen, she proclaimed that they had a traffic problem in Beijing. If this, I said, was London all these bicycles would be cars, whereupon she stopped and looked at me quite bewildered and said: "Does your government have so many cars?" Nothing could persuade her in the following weeks that even I, a disreputable Maoist, could own a car.

SYDNEY

The Sydney Opera House is one of the most recognisable buildings in the world. However, on my very first visit to Australia in early 1977 nothing could have prepared me for the reality of this glorious building. Up until then I had really regarded architecture as process and function. But this was art on a mammoth and inspirational scale. Furthermore, I shall also never forget standing on the balcony in the interval of Madame Butterfly and taking in that amazing Harbour Bridge. Those two days in Sydney have not dimmed either.

Edmund Capon will lead an 18-day journey to China with World Expeditions in September this year, following the Chinese Buddhist Trail. Phone 1300 720 000. See worldexpeditions.com