Every trip on this site carries one number in front of it, and that number is doing less work than it appears to. It is a starting figure per person. It assumes two people sharing one room, arrival in a shoulder month rather than the busiest weeks, and a booking made early enough that the operating company still has its ordinary allocation rather than its last few beds. Change any one of those three and the figure moves. Change all three and it can move by half again.
The second thing to know is what the figure is a floor under. It covers the ground portion: the nights, the transfers named in the trip description, the guiding where a trip is guided, and the meals the operating company includes. It does not cover getting to the start. It does not cover what you spend once you are there on the meals nobody promised you, the entry fees to the places you decide to go on a free afternoon, the tips that are customary in some countries and unheard of in others, or the day you lose to weather and fill with a taxi. On a two week trip those unnamed costs have run anywhere from two hundred dollars to well over a thousand, and the difference is mostly a matter of temperament rather than destination.
The third thing is the least comfortable. This office is paid a commission by the company that operates the trip, after you have travelled and come home. That is a real interest and you should know about it. It is also why the figures here are the operating company's figures and not ours: we do not set them, we do not mark them up, and we take no money from you at any point. We say this on every page and we mean it as a fact you can check against your own statement rather than a promise.
Nine nights in six village inns and one mountain lodge, two of them for three nights at a time, moved between by rental car you drive yourself, with luggage staying in the trunk and carried in by hand each evening.
Eight nights in four family-run village hotels, two nights in each, walking between three of them on marked paths and moving by road once; a van shifts the main bags between hotels on walking days, so you carry a daypack.
Nine nights: two in Shkoder in a small hotel, three in a guesthouse in Theth, one in a hut nearer the pass, two in a Valbona guesthouse and one back in Shkoder, moving by van, boat and on foot, with luggage carried ahead by road and packhorse while you walk with a daypack.
Eight nights, seven in one timber guesthouse near the Riisa side of the park and one in Parnu before the flight home, with a driver moving the party and all luggage in a single van transfer at each end and nothing carried between beds.
Eight nights, all of them in the same family run guesthouse in Zabljak with private bathrooms and no elevator; a car and driver moves the party to each trailhead in the morning and collects it in the afternoon, so luggage is unpacked once and stays there.
Nine nights: four in a stone village house inland, two in a small family guesthouse near Malko Tarnovo, three in simple rooms above a beach at Sinemorets or Varvara, moved by hired car with a driver, with luggage carried in that car and never on your back.
Nine nights in four places: three in Castro, two in Cucao near the national park, two on Isla Mechuque reached by launch, and two in Ancud, moving by private vehicle and public ferry, with luggage carried in the vehicle except on the Mechuque leg, where you take an overnight bag.
Nine nights: seven in family run guesthouses of four to nine rooms along the coastal route, two in a small hotel near the island's main town, moved by a booked driver and one local bus, with a bag transfer van carrying everything but a daypack between each night.
Nine nights in five places: three farm guesthouses, one small hotel above a bakery in Ludza, and one room in a potter's household near Preili, moved between by a hired car you drive yourself, with luggage staying in the trunk between towns.
Eight nights in four beds: three in a ranch guest house near Cassoday, two above a main street storefront in Cottonwood Falls, two in a converted stone schoolhouse west of Council Grove, one final night in Manhattan; one rented car throughout, luggage stays in the trunk between moves.
Nine nights in three beds across four stays: three nights at a working cattle ranch north of Mullen, two at a guest ranch on the Niobrara, two in a small hotel in Valentine, two back at the first ranch; you drive your own rental between them and your bags stay in the car.
Nine nights: seven in family-run inns with shared bathing, one in a temple guest hall with a shared sleeping room, one near the airport at the end. You walk between them every day carrying a daypack, and your main bag is forwarded ahead by the domestic parcel service.
Nine nights: four in a small hotel in Xincheng near the gorge mouth, two in a homestay in the rift valley near Yuli, three in a guesthouse on the coast south of Hualien city, moved between by hired car with a driver, and luggage travels in the car rather than on your back.
Eleven nights in six places: four small rural hotels, one converted granite farmhouse and one night in a guesthouse inside a walled town, with a driver moving the party and the bags by road while you walk or ride between them.
Nine nights in four places: three in a Vimperk guesthouse, two in a converted forestry lodge at Modrava, two above Cerne Lake, two in Ceske Budejovice; a driver moves the bags between the four, and you walk or take the summer forest bus.
Nine nights in three village bases of three nights each, all rooms with private bathrooms in family run places, moved between by a small rental car you drive yourselves, with luggage staying in the car and never transferred by anyone else.
Nine nights in four places: three in a family guesthouse in the Biebrza villages, two in a wooden house near Kruszyniany, three by the forest at Bialowieza, one last night in Bialystok, with a driver moving the party and the luggage between them by road.
Nine nights: three in a colonial house in Salta city, two in a small hotel in Cafayate, two in a plain adobe inn in Cachi, two back in Salta, with a driver and a vehicle moving the party and the bags between them on gravel and paved road.
Eight nights: four in a small hotel at Aberlour, two in a guesthouse at Grantown on Spey, two in an inn at Kingussie, with a driver moving the party and the bags between the three by road while you walk the section in between.
Nine nights split between two family-run guesthouses, five in a Glenariff village and four near Cushendall, with a local driver moving suitcases between them on the changeover morning and returning walkers from the far end of each day's route.
Nine nights: two in a small hotel in Targu Jiu, four in family guesthouses in the Jiu and Olt valley villages, two in a stone refuge below the ridge, one back in town; a driver moves the party and the bags, and you walk carrying a day pack.
Eight nights in four harbor guesthouses, two nights in each, private rooms with shared or private bath depending on the house; the party moves between islands on scheduled passenger ferries and walks the last stretch, carrying its own bags every time.
Nine nights in three places: four in a small inn at Miyanoura on the north coast, three in a family guesthouse at Anbo, two at Onoaida in the south, moved by rented car, with the two large bags staying in the car and a daypack carried on the trails.
Nine nights: two in Skidegate, three in Port Clements or Tlell, two on Moresby near Sandspit, two back at the north end, moved by rental vehicle and one inter island ferry, with your bags going wherever you go because nothing is portered.
Ordered by from, per person. This is an ordering by one measurable fact and not a ranking by quality: no trip here is better than another and this office will not say that one is.
What actually moves the number
Four things do most of the moving, and only one of them is distance. The first is how many nights the operating company is responsible for you. The second is the standard of the bed: a room with a shared bathroom in a family run place and a room in a small hotel with a restaurant are not the same product and the gap between them is wider than most people expect, often forty percent on an otherwise identical itinerary. The third is how many people are in the vehicle. A trip run for six costs more per head than the same route run for eighteen, because the driver, the guide and the vehicle cost the same either way. The fourth is the ratio of arranged to unarranged, which is not the same as the ratio of good to bad: a trip where a guide meets you every morning has that guide's wages inside the figure, and a trip where nobody meets you does not.
What barely moves it: how far away the place is. Flying is not inside these figures at all. A destination eleven hours away can start lower than one four hours away, and several on this list do, because the cost of a bed and a driver has almost nothing to do with the cost of the seat that gets you there.
- under $1,400
- Short, usually four to seven nights, simple rooms, and often a place where your own money goes furthest once you land
- $1,400 to $2,200
- The broadest band on the list. Ten to fourteen nights at a modest standard, or a shorter trip in a country where nothing is inexpensive
- $2,200 to $3,200
- Either a longer trip, or a small group, or a standard of room with a restaurant attached and a person at a desk at night
- $3,200 to $4,300
- Small parties, guided most days, and usually somewhere the logistics themselves are expensive: boats, permits, remote road transfers
- above $4,300
- Long, or very small, or both. The figure buys time and low numbers rather than luxury, and the rooms are frequently plainer than the price suggests
Where the figure is true and useless
Here is the case. Two trips sit near each other on this list, within a couple of hundred dollars. One is five nights. One is fifteen. Ordered by the starting figure they are neighbors; ordered by what a night costs they are at opposite ends of everything we sell. If you are budgeting for a trip, they look interchangeable. If you are budgeting for a year, one of them is three times the other. The number is accurate and it has told you almost nothing.
The second failure is subtler and catches people who are being careful. The lowest figures on this list belong to trips in places where a bed is inexpensive, and a bed being inexpensive is usually a fact about wages rather than about scenery. Those trips often ask more of you once you arrive: more of your own arranging, more meals you find yourself, more hours where nobody is responsible for you. That is a genuinely good trip for some people and a bad week for others, and the figure cannot tell the two apart. Meanwhile the highest figures frequently buy the opposite: not a better place, but fewer decisions and a smaller vehicle. We have had people spend four thousand dollars to be left alone less.
Reserve against the question you are actually asking
There are five orders on this site and this is one of them. The others sort the same twenty-four trips by beds slept in, by hours in the air from the middle of this country, by miles walked on an ordinary day, and by how much of the trip is decided before you get there. None of the five is a ranking. None of them puts the good trips at the top, because none of them knows what a good trip is for you. Choosing an order is choosing which question you want answered first, and that choice is the only ranking anywhere on this site.
This office will not tell you which of the five matters. We are not being coy and we are not withholding expertise. We genuinely do not know whether your ceiling is the dollars, the days off work, the knees or the tolerance for being handed a schedule, and the person who does know is reading this. What we will do, once you tell us, is read the same catalogue through your ordering and put the two or three trips that survive in front of you with their real numbers attached. Reserve a place on one of them and we place the reservation with the company that runs it. We do not take payment, we hold no card, and we do not call anyone who has not asked us to.
If your constraint is the figure, say the figure. A request that says four thousand dollars for two people, ten days, September, gets a better answer than a request that says somewhere warm and not too expensive, because the first one lets us stop guessing and start subtracting.