ESSENTIAL COLLECTION

With this in mind, our team of destination specialists have poured their considerable expertise into designing a series of luxury, tailor-made journeys using the very best value-for-money as the guiding principle. Each trip is structured to include the key sites that no one would want to miss and carefully embellished with some of the most astonishing and pleasurable things to do in each place. Exploring on foot or on (e-)bikes is a consistent feature as the slower pace allows for a much richer, more intense experience. The very best local guides are brought in at key moments and where their expertise is most valuable, but there is also plenty of time for independent exploration and serendipitous discovery. This element of independence is reinforced with opportunities to take public transport, when doing so most definitely enhances the journey – the crowded and colourful public ferry in Burma, the rickety old train through the Sri Lankan Tea Country, the super-fast Bullet Train in Japan, the light aircraft over the African savannah... In several countries, where it  is enjoyable and easy to do so, we are proposing that you self-drive, guiding the hire car through the wildly beautiful scenery of the American West or New Zealand, through the lush, sloth-filled jungles of Costa Rica, along the sun-splashed coast of Cape Town, onto the islands of Croatia or through the cork orchards of Portugal...

Your accommodation has been very carefully selected to ensure excellent levels of comfort that do not blow the budget. Emphasis has been placed on character, service and location over glitz, reputation and price, leaving plenty in the pot for adventures to stir the soul. Raft down the remote rivers of Utah, camping on the banks overnight. Cycle down an Indonesian volcano, sail a felucca on the Nile, sleep on star beds in the Kenyan bush, under the glittering night sky. Ride pillion on the back of a Vespa through the alleys of Saigon, in side-cars through the Marrakech medina, or on an ox-cart taxi in Mandalay, catch a longtail boat down the Mekong from Thailand into Laos… Explore Wadi Rum in a Land Rover with your Bedouin guide, wallow in the hot waters of your Japanese onsen bath, take a helicopter up onto Franz Josef Glacier on New Zealand’s South Island. These are not stripped-out programmes but rather meticulously crafted, wonderfully varied independent journeys where the service levels have been carefully considered and extravagance has been pared down, all to give you the chance to discover for yourselves the true essence of these amazing countries. This is our Essential Collection.