Late yesterday evening I left my hotel to buy a new battery for my mobile phone and was completely blown away by what I saw.

Saudi women without veils. I had never seen this in public before. Until now, women have always been covered, often head to toe in a black chador or cloak and a veil covering at least their hair and often their face as well. I was shocked and really had to keep doing a double take.

Perhaps they were foreigners who occasionally could get away without their hair covered? Was I really in Saudi Arabia?

I’ve been coming to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, for close to five years. It is at the heart of the country’s vast desert and is known as the Najd region. Islam here has always been conservatively interpreted. The area’s austere desert-based culture is interwoven inseparably with religious teachings. It’s where the Wahhabis came from and is what has always put the more cosmopolitan residents of the port city of Jeddah in the Hijaz region at odds with their conservative desert cousins.

In short, what I am saying, is that such a change in Riyadh is fundamental to the country -- not a freak of some isolated pocket of liberal rebellion. It may seem like a miniscule change by Western standards, but here it is a massive shift away from the overbearing religious policemen of the past who often harshly enforced strict dress codes forcing women to wear a veil.

About three years ago, I did a story featuring religious policemen in Riyadh shopping malls, just like the one I visited last night. Their job was to make sure men and women do not mix unless they are related (this particularly applied to young men) and to make sure women were covered up. I remember some expatriate women telling me they had been accosted by religious policemen and being told off for wearing nail polish in public. If they wanted to do that they were told they should wear gloves. Any woman letting her veil slip to show her hair was quickly accosted.

Last night, I saw no religious policemen in the mall. There were young, quite casual security guards who did ask us what nationality we were before allowing us off the street into the mall, but nothing overbearing.

Women, particularly older teenagers -- maybe as many as one in five -- were walking around chatting and window shopping arm in arm with female friends, their hair permed, wavy, treated, made up to look attractive. There was an energy and excitement about many of those who had taken the cultural plunge to unveil so to speak. It was clear they were having fun with this novel freedom.

Of course, not all women removed their veil, some completely covered their faces with a black scarf, others left slits for their eyes only while others kept their veil over their hair but allowed their faces to be uncovered. Choice is still driven by family values.

It was also noticeable that while there were plenty of young women in the mall, there were relatively few young men. As recently as the year before last, I spoke to a young man who had been chased out of a mall by religious police as he and his friends had sought to meet girls. It was for him a huge frustration that there are no places where young men and women could meet legally.

But what I do detect in this new relaxation of religious interpretation is the first major softening of Saudi Arabia’s harsh image. Is it far enough? Is it fast enough to meet the expectations of the country’s booming young population? (More than half have been born since 1990, 75 percent are under 27.) I don’t know. I have argued in the past it may not be.

I was here a year-and-a-half ago when the country’s ruler King Abdullah came to the throne after almost a decade as Crown Prince and defacto ruler during the then King Fahad’s ill health. I was told the octogenarian monarch wanted to bring reforms. Now I feel like I can say I’m beginning to see them.

I don’t want to say lifting a veil or two will solve the country’s ills; it won’t. Women here still cannot vote, cannot stand for election, cannot drive, cannot go out alone. But as my elder daughter, Lowrie, studies the British suffragette movement at school in London, I am reminded that women went to prison and died to get the vote in Britain, and that change comes slowly and often at a cost.

Incredible as it may seem today, barely 100 years ago, against a very vocal conservative male-dominated opposition, wealthy women over 30 won the right to cast their ballot in elections. Only years later did women finally achieve equal voting status with men.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah faces no less conservative forces as he inches reforms ahead. He is weighted by being the custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites -- Mecca and Medina -- a religious responsibility that cannot be overestimated. The concern expressed here is that if change is too fast it will backfire. Conservatives will jump on any failure to say they were right, and the king is wrong.

Beyond lifting the veil, I do see other changes. For one, it is getting easier (fumbling bureaucracy apart) to get in and out of this country. The Saudis are more willing than they have ever been to host international journalists and others. They are planning new cities to diversify the economy from one solely dependent on exporting oil, and to employ the booming population. Things are moving in the direction the West has been demanding for decades.

Change here is glacial, but there is a thaw.

Madhya Pradesh, India -

We're rushing to try to make our train back to Delhi but perhaps typing on my blackberry will take my mind off of the hair-raising drive. Since I moved to India nine months ago to take this job, I think I've grown immune to the sound of honking horns.

We just left a tribal village in Madhya Pradesh, a state within India south of Delhi, where we really got a sense for the challenges of fighting malnutrition in this country. UNICEF, the UN body, estimates there are almost four million children suffering from malnutrition in this one state! We met a young mother, Gita, and her 10 month-old daughter. Her daughter suffers from grade 4 (severe) malnutrition. The daughter, Kalpana, has boils on her head and the tiniest legs and arms one could imagine. Gita knows her daughter is malnourished (she feeds her only milk and biscuits) but says she can't take her to a clinic to get help because her husband just won't let her. When I ask her if she knows that malnutrition could kill Kalpana, she answers simply, "yes". I ask her if her husband knows this could kill her and she says yes - her husband told her that if their daughter dies, "just let her".

This exemplifies several issues, one being the overwhelming preference for boys over girl children in these remote regions of the country. Also, that even if some of the severely malnourished can be identified - cultural and logistical barriers can prevent them from getting help

We're up early again this morning driving out to a rural part of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (MP). We've come to MP because it has the unfortunate distinction of being the worst region of India when it comes to ranking malnutrition in kids under six. Malnutrition not only kills children but severely stunts physical and mental development in older years and hurts productivity.

To put just how bad the situation is here into context, 60 percent of young children suffer from malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh (according to UNICEF). Compare that with Ethiopia, which has 47percent.

We took the train from Delhi yesterday and travelled several hours by jeep to get out to some remote tribal hamlets. There is a superstition that prevents some mothers from breastfeeding a few days after pregnancy which can hurt the child. There is also a general lack of information in some of these rural areas which magnifies the problem.

From a journalist story-telling perspective, this story presents several challenges. This is such a huge issue - with so far to go - but how do I make little Rahul's story (a stick-thin baby we met in a critical care unit yesterday) different from all of the other stories of kids starving around the world?

It's powerful to be there - to meet little Rahul and his parents who've lost two other kids due to malnutrition. But, for many in the world, the idea that there are starving children in India isn't "news". The challenge will be to find a way to tell this story so that it sticks out from the rest. I'm not sure that I've figured that out yet.

I have another day of shooting ahead and hours and hours of travelling down dusty, back roads in order to do it.

Gaza residents are out on the streets enjoying the sunshine and the peace. They take this opportunity not only to shop for food and other necessities, but also to make their feelings known. Dozens of women have gathered outside the local parliament building to march towards the home of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It’s more like a party than a protest. Music plays. Children skip alongside the marchers, many of them eagerly tugging on our sleeves to be photographed. Women chant: “Hamas and Fatah unite now!” But no one is optimistic. We decide to talk to a friendly-looking group of women. Ridha speaks English and reluctantly agrees to talk to us. After a few halting answers, she suddenly picks up speed, angrily repeating “We are sad. Palestinians killing each other.” But ask for a solution and she shrugs her shoulders and the other women around her nod in agreement. No one has any answers.

Today is a sunny, quiet day in Gaza City. But there are still gunmen on street corners and rooftops. Fatah forces have brought in what looks like a small tank parked behind a sand bunker, literally dug in for war. The first thing we did was stop by a small group of gunmen hoping to shoot a quick piece to camera. After some fast-talking by our genial driver, Ahmed, they agree to let us shoot for no more than 5 minutes. We jump out and begin immediately. Ahmed continues to chat to the gunmen, hoping to distract them from observing us too carefully. It turns out they are part of a joint patrol to secure the roads for Prime Minister Ismail Hanieyah’s departure for the talks in Mecca today. Hamas and Fatah working together. That’s a change from nearly a week of constant gunbattles. They don’t seem very happy about it though. They eyeball each other for a little while and before refocusing their attention to us. One of them leans over to Ahmed and growls something in his ear: Time to stop shooting and move on.