DIY tours

Hacking Adventure Tours

Packaged adventure tours can be fun and useful. A guided hut-to-hut walk in the Italian Alps, or a bicycle tour around the villages of Rajasthan, or a kayaking cruise between Caribbean islands are fantastic journeys that can be hard to program yourself. A good adventure tour agency knows how to smoothly sequence events like this, and on higher-price tours you may get a guide as well.

But I prefer to create my own adventure tours, because I can save many thousands of dollars that way. I use the commercial adventure tour itineraries as a basis for my own travels, and then modify them as needed. The way I figure it, if they can move a dozen people along the route, I should be able to do it with one or two. The most reputable agencies publish their itineraries online in great detail as a sales incentive. But to complete many of the routes they are selling requires private transportation or special accommodations. You might need a pick-up or delivery at a trail-head, or a jeep to reach a village, or even a plane flight, etc. This is where many budget travelers stop. It took me many years to realize that in most places in the world today — even developing nations — it is not hard, or very expensive, to arrange private transportation or expert help. And with the internet, these arrangements can be made beforehand. I’ve pre-arranged jeeps, vans, buses, and boats. The simple rule of thumb is: if a US-based tour agency can pre-arrange it, you can too, and at a great savings.

It will take some time and googling to arrange all the parts of an adventure tour, but the payoff is that you can replicate the same tour for about 1/5th the cost of the glossy professional version. So now I page through the adventure travel sites discovering all kinds of nifty tours I would have never thought about doing. Unlike the unconnected places in a guide book, there’s a logical flow to an itinerary, and because of their high prices, these agencies will hone and optimize a trip for peak experiences. A key thing: pay attention to the time of year they run a tour, which is again highly optimized. Still I wind up modifying them in some way for my own use. I usually chop off the leisurely entry in a big city and head directly to the adventure (I call that laser-forward-slow-back travel).

Adventure Tour Agencies

• National Geographic Expeditions
• Wilderness Travel
• Geoex
• AsiaTranspacific
• Africa Adventure
• Zegrahm
• Journeys International

Some famous adventure travel companies specialize in highly-refined premium tours around the world, but they may be low on actual adventures. For instance I find National Geographic Expeditions’ trips (better than their Adventure trips) involve more car and plane travel than suits me, but occasionally they’ll have a nice gem worth replicating. Wilderness Travel gets you walking or kayaking a bit more, but still cover more miles in vehicles than I want, but I have used their itineraries a few times with great success.

Geoex offers pretty cool offbeat trips I’ve not seen elsewhere, but they also have plenty that are too mileage-hungry to count as an adventure. AsiaTranspacific specializes in Asian trips, a few of which stay close to the bone. For Africa and animals I look to Africa Adventure; they have a really good season chart for best times of year and parks for wildlife viewing. I like Zegrahm for inspiration. They do real off-the road adventures, including trips one might describe as “expeditions” which is more my kind of adventure travel.

But of all the tour sites, the one that has provided me with the most appealing itineraries is Journeys International. They emphasize in getting you to walk, hike, bike and kayak and this is really the way to go anywhere. Almost any one of their itineraries would yield a fantastic adventure.

Remember, I have no personal experience with the tours given by any of these outfits. I only use their freely published routes. All these tours are super expensive if you buy them but I would bet they would be really fun and generally well done. I recommend them here only as models to assemble your own. — KK

Serious off-road survival

Vehicle-Dependent Expedition Guide

This great book is unfortunately expensive and difficult to find. However it is the most stunning collection of vehicle expedition lore anyone is likely to encounter. It lists everything from how many Land Rover Defender 90’s you can fit in a cargo container, to what socks to wear while driving in the desert. It is extremely detailed, does not shy away from product names, and is rife with real-world life-saving data. It includes tons of information on planning, visas, customs, shipping, survival, vehicle set up, driving tips, GPS and traditional navigation etc. On top of all that the writing style is matter of fact, the book is very well organized, and the photos and examples are inspiring. The most surprising fact that I learned from this book was how much weight matters, just like backpacking and mountaineering, it is the single most important thing to minimize in vehicle expeditions. Weight adversely affects handling, fuel efficiency, acceleration, braking, and your ability to traverse sand, mud, or steep grades. The $150 spent on this book will save anyone thousands on any offroad trip or expedition they are undertaking. — Alexander Rose

Best of the world

World Heritage Sites

I’ve slowly clued into the fact that there is a network of “World Heritage” monuments, sites, and natural parks throughout the world–places that are deemed unique enough, or endangered enough, to deserve funding by UNESCO. A cultural site can be a monument, a group of buildings, or an entire city. But to be granted a World Heritage designation, it must “represent a masterpiece of human creative genius; or bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.”

I like to think of these creations as the Best of Civilization.

Almost every country has at least one site, and sometimes many. Some places are justifiably famous, but many are mysteriously overlooked. Heritage sites are always among the most interesting destinations to visit in any country, well worth going out of your way to see. The sites range from ruins like the famous Inca Machu Picchu, to the less known ancient city of Fatehpur Sikri, India, to preserved towns like Visby, Sweden, to unspoiled wilderness areas like the Galapagos Islands. In total UNESCO lists 788 sites in 100 countries, which also include about 150 natural sites, deemed “areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance” or outstanding bio-diversity.

In my travels I’ve learned to seek them out.

For a full list, and criteria, see World Heritage List. — KK

• BULGARIA (Year added to list)1979 Boyana Church1979 Madara Rider1979 Rock-hewn Churches of Ivanovo1979 Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak1983 Ancient City of Nessebar1983 Srebarna Nature Reserve1983 Pirin National Park1983 Rila Monastery1985 Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari

Exploring with a vehicle

Overlanders’ Handbook

This is a more affordable version of Vehicle Dependent Expeditions. For $30 you’ll get most of what is in that $100 plus book. In fact, this Handbook is more practical, with the kind of information you would want to take with you on a rough vehicle expedition, while Expeditions is more for pre-planning your trip. Think of it as the Lonely Planet guide to overlanding. — Alexander Rose

• The single biggest mistake first-timers make is over-equipping and overloadingtheir vehicle.
• Do You Need a Powered Winch?A powered winch may be crucial to the ‘expedition look’, but the received opinion from most 4x4 overlanders who’ve been there and got stuck is that, unless you’re looking to push your 4x4 to the limit, there are many other more useful items.However they’re powered, the typical permanent front mounting will be at the wrong end more than half the time and on many occasions there’ll be nothing close enough to winch off unless other vehicles are present. And if they are, chances are they can simply pull you out.
• Shipping involves so many entities that it’s very difficult to discern where a service charge ends and a bribe begins.
• You must also be very conscious of your situation and the local culture. In many developed countries, an attempted bribe could land you in a lot of trouble. On the other hand, in some countries, without a small bribe your vehicle could turn to rust before you get the single stamp you need on your temporary import document.

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