OTTAWA - Avoid a fall election? Check.

Distribute billions in stimulus spending across Canada? Check.

Win a parliamentary vote aimed at abolishing the long-gun registry? Check.

Dispatch four federal by-elections? Check.

Burnish international credentials, especially with emerging powers?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper embarks Thursday on the first of three consecutive trips abroad that will keep him out of the House of Commons virtually until the fall session ends in mid-December.

Trips to Singapore, India, Trinidad and Tobago, China and South Korea mark the culmination of an autumn political season that has seen Conservative fortunes taking flight.

Barring an unforeseen international misstep by Harper, the heavy travel itinerary may help glide his minority government through the end of 2009. His travels should also help smooth the way for next summer's international summitry in central Ontario.

"It's an opportunity to underscore the importance of continued global co-operation during these times," Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, said Wednesday of this weekend's APEC leaders' summit in Singapore.

"Canada will also be laying the groundwork for the upcoming G8 and G20 summits which Canada will be hosting in June 2010."

And if the prime minister also manages to avoid the daily accusations of pork-barrelling and partisan manipulation he faces in Parliament, so much the better for the governing Conservatives.

Prime ministers love international travel, says Prof. Adam Harmes of the University of Western Ontario, because "they look prime ministerial, they're representing the country."

"Generally the domestic political issues are not there" on foreign trips, said the political scientist who specializes in international relations.

"Plus, on a more practical matter, it gets a lot of media coverage. It's useful for the prime minister to be in the media for things that are relatively benign."

This marks the most intense international travel period for Harper since he came to office in January 2006. He'll visit five countries on three separate trips over a four-week period - including two global circumnavigations to southeast Asia.

It is the prime minister's first visit to both India and China, two huge and growing markets that also happen to have large expatriot communities in Canada.

"My sense would be that, with Canada co-hosting the G20 next year, and the fact that the prime minister hasn't really gone to any of the emerging powers, the opportunity presented itself," said Rohinton Medhora of the International Development Research Centre, a Crown corporation that helps developing countries use science and technology.

Medhora said he expects the prime minister will sound out India on G20 priorities and "get a sense what this non-G8 world looks like."

The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation conference in Singapore, which Harper attends this weekend, may prove to be the lightest lifting of the lot.

Talks at APEC are expected to focus primarily on the stuttering global economic recovery and trade flows, both areas where Canada can rightfully boast of being ahead of the curve.

Perhaps the most vexing aspect of the APEC summit could be the traditional donning of the host country's chosen attire - this year a combination of Chinese, Indian and Malay designs in linen and silk, according to published reports.

In the past, APEC leaders have been asked to wear everything from ponchos to traditional Vietnamese tunics to oilskin rain jackets for the official "family" photo. But Singapore organizers want them to wear the garb throughout Saturday's evening itinerary.

From Singapore, Harper flies to Mumbai, New Delhi and Amritsar in India for a frenetic schedule of meetings and photo ops before returning briefly to Canada.

The prime minister and his wife will lay a wreath at a memorial site where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in New Delhi, tour a bullet-riddled Jewish site that's been preserved as a monument to last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, visit the famed Golden Temple in Amritsar, and even hit the set of Dance Premier League, a Mumbai-based reality dance show - one of whose judges is a Canadian.

"For a prime minister who is seen as very strategic, these trips are important in shaping Harper's domestic narrative," said Jonathan Rose, a professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., who specializes in political communication.

"They provide evidence of a leader knowledgeable of and in touch with the concerns of new voters from these countries.

"We also shouldn't downplay the pageantry and staged choreography."

On issues of policy substance, prime ministerial trips can be harder to gauge but not necessarily any less significant.

Government officials are soft-selling the "deliverables" of the Singapore-India leg, specifically a civilian nuclear co-operation agreement with India that International Trade Minister Stockwell Day announced was being negotiated last January.

"These trips are not just about visiting a country, signing a piece of paper and leaving," Harper's spokesman said Wednesday.

"It's about building personal relationships. It's about strengthening the links that already exist."