Neither does it mean that employees without children can’t ask their boss to let them work from home.”If you’re a valued employee with bags of experience, you’re more likely to convince your employer that you can work from home effectively, than if you’re fairly junior, only started last month and need constant supervision.Pick an appropriate time to approach your boss to sell them the idea, advises John Lees, the author of Take Control of Your Career (McGraw-Hill, £12.99) “Ask them when you’re doing well, or at an annual review Don’t make it sound like a demand, or threaten to leave. Instead, show the benefits to the company.”In its guide to flexible working, Acas, the independent service aimed at helping organisations improve employee relations, says that the benefits to employers include cost savings on office space, improved employee relations, increased retention of valued employees, higher levels of employee commitment and less unplanned absenteeism or days off due to sickness.Lees says: “It’s also worth pointing out that you’ll still attend team meetings, visit clients face to face, and have certain hours when you will be easily contactable.”There are tax implications in working from home. Only 40 per cent said that their employer covered the costs of remote working.The Flexible Working Regulations, which came into force in 2003, provide parents with children under six – or 18 if the child has a disability – with the right to request flexible working arrangements, which may include working from home.The employment solicitor James Upton, from Hill Dickinson Solicitors, says: “This means an employer has to follow certain procedures to consider their request for flexible working. However, despite the potential gains for the employer, 93 per cent said it was the employees who were choosing to work away from the office, rather than their employer encouraging them to do so.It also found that the majority of companies were unwilling to fund the arrangements.

“There are positive benefits to skipping the daily commute and increasing productivity by working at home. Highly-skilled workers who are in demand may find their company would rather allow them to work flexibly, rather than lose them.”In a separate report, published recently by the Management Consultancies Association, a third of the 1,200 respondents claimed that remote working is now common in their organisation. Describing them as “freE workers”, it says this group accounts for 46 per cent of the work force but will rise to 80 per cent by 2020.”The question by then will be not who sometimes works at home but who doesn’t,” says report author William Nelson. The report, commissioned by Brother, the electronics and manufacturing company, also identifies a new type of worker, who is based at the office but e-mails clients from their BlackBerry on the train or makes work-related phone calls from home. By 2020, it reckons that 16 per cent of the working population will be at least partially based at home.Employers increasingly allow well-paid, high-flying professionals, as well as traditional tele-workers, to work away from the office. This is an elegant area of Georgian and Victorian thoroughfares, notably Grey Street, with its classical fa?es, fine buildings such as the Theatre Royal (0870 905 5060; www.theatreroyal.co.uk), and its monument to the former Prime Minister, Earl Grey. In May, the world’s highest gondola lift, reaching up about three miles, opened roughly an hour’s drive from Indian Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar.

And adventurous skiers are being attracted to the nascent ski areas here. Since the 1960s, the upper part, still known as McLeod Ganj (or market), has been home to the refugees, complete with monasteries, meditation centres and craft outlets. Tibetans have also settled further east in the Kullu Valley, an idyllic area of orchards and terraced hills surrounded by the snow-dusted Barabhangal and Parvati Himalayan ranges. Manali, at the head of the valley, has become one of the major tourist centres of the state, offering a wide range of accommodation and activities – including trekking and rafting.Negotiating your way around these areas on an independent trip is perfectly possible. But if you have limited time it could pay to take an organised tour. The adventure travel specialist Explore (0870 333 4001; www.explore.co.uk), for example, has a 17-day “Little Tibet” holiday departing July to September next year and taking in Leh, the spectacular drive from there to Manali, the Buddhist monasteries of Hemis and Tiksey, and Dharamsala as well as the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.

The trip costs £1,299 including flights from Gatwick to Delhi, transport and accommodation.HILL STATIONS: SOUNDS COOLIf you’re after a sense of nostalgia and a taste of the burra sahibs’ world of British India, you don’t have to confine yourself to Simla. Northern Uttar Pradesh also retains British-built hill retreats. Mussoorie in the Garhwal district is close enough to Delhi to get somewhat unpleasantly packed during the summer, between March and July.Naini Tal in Kumaon further east tends to be a little less crowded. Set by a lake and with wonderful countryside nearby, it remains a place of great charm. Naini Tal is also the gateway to Nanda Devi, the highest mountain completely located in India at 25,645 feet (7,817m), to the north.