Where these trips go, and how to reserve a trip by region from New Orleans

Twenty-seven trips, six regions, one ladder. The catalogue runs from a trip where somebody meets the arriving traveller and a guide is on hand most days, down to a trip that is a permit, a ranger and the one bed there is. Nothing on that chain outranks anything else. If you would rather reserve a trip by region from New Orleans than by how much of it you want to run yourself, this page is the other way in: it takes the map a section at a time.

The chain holds its shape across borders. A trip in the Caucasus on the third rung asks the same of you as one in the tropics on the third rung: beds, ground transport and entrance times set before departure, and nobody travelling with you. What changes region to region is which rungs exist at all. See the five rungs side by side for what each one includes.

The Himalaya and central Asia

Five trips, and the top of the ladder is thickest here. Four of the five sit on the first or second rung: somebody meets the traveller at arrival, a guide walks the days that need one, and every ground transfer is held in advance. Trekking and park permits are obtained by the operating company as part of running the trip, and their cost sits inside the figure you are quoted. The flight is your own arrangement in every case, and what this office reserves begins at the moment you are met.

The gap is the fourth rung. A base and a vehicle is not something we can place across most of this region, because the companies we work through hire out a car with a driver attached, and a driver turns it back into a second-rung trip.

The Caucasus and the Black Sea

Four trips, and the range is deliberately narrow. Two sit on the second rung, with a guide for the mountain days and nothing arranged for the town days at either end. Two sit on the third. Figures here start at $1,951 per person.

Both ends of the chain are missing. No company we place with runs a met-at-arrival trip here with a guide on hand daily, and the fifth rung has no form in this area that can be reserved through an office. Where one of these four trips crosses water, the operating company holds that passage under its own licence, in its own name.

The Mediterranean islands

Five trips, and the middle of the ladder carries all of them. Three are third rung: crossings, beds and entrance times fixed before you go, and no guide travelling with you. One is fourth rung, a house on one island and a car for eleven days. One is fifth: an island with a single small harbour, where the operating company holds the weekly crossing and the one room above the harbour, because there is nothing else to hold.

Keep in mind who carries you over the water. This office places the reservation; the company running the boat operates the passage under its own licence and on its own terms, and it is that company that moves a crossing when weather moves it. the cancellation terms in full sets out what follows when that happens.

Northern Europe

Five trips, weighted to the bottom half of the ladder. This is where a base and a vehicle genuinely works: two trips are a cabin, a car and an empty diary, with the cabin, the car and the two nights on either side reserved through here. Two more are third rung. One is fifth, a hut reached on foot, a permit the operator obtains, and a food drop.

The first rung is absent, and that is a decision rather than an oversight. The companies operating here build for people who want to be left alone, so a met-at-arrival guided trip would have to be assembled out of pieces from four separate firms. If one piece moved, this office could not stand behind the rest of it.

The tropics and the southern hemisphere

Five trips, running from the second rung to the fifth. Two are guided in parts: a naturalist for the days inside the reserve, nobody for the coast days afterward. Two are third rung. One is fifth, nineteen days built around a research station bunk, a ranger and a boat that sails once a week whether or not you are on it.

Two gaps, both worth saying plainly. The first is seasonal: about half of these trips run four or five months of the year and the operators close for the rest, so a request in the wrong month gets a straight answer instead of a substitute. The second is distance: the flight is your own arrangement, and the trip quoted to you starts on the ground.

North America

Three trips, the thinnest section on the page. Two are fourth rung and one is third. The shortage is not for want of places to go. It is that most people who ask about the continent have worked out the driving and the beds already, and what they want is one leg rather than the whole thing. So the three listed are the ones a single company runs end to end: a canyon river stretch, a rail and road loop in the north, and a desert base with a vehicle.

If you are looking at this continent and want one part of it handled rather than all of it, ask anyway. request a trip quote 24/7 accepts a request in whatever shape you have it.

What holds true in all six

The company operating your trip bills you directly at its own figure once the reservation is placed. No payment of any kind is taken here and no card details are held; the commission arrives from that company after you are home. A rung means the same thing wherever it sits on the map, which is why both ways into the catalogue lead to the same twenty-seven trips.

If you know the region but not the rung, the whole ladder, top to bottom lays all twenty-seven out in order. If you know neither, send the month and a sentence about what you want the days to feel like. Every request is answered within one business day. the questions this office is asked most covers what comes up beforehand, and how a request becomes a reservation shows what happens after.