WORDS
Ian Belcher
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
Arctic cruise
Savour the daylight among the Svalbard archipelago’s glaciers and iceberg-flecked fjords where the midnight sun doesn’t set for four months. After boarding MS Trollfjord – Arctic adventure cruise specialist Hurtigruten’s flagship – in Bergen, “The City of Seven Mountains” swaddling historic Vågen Bay, the 15-day trip heads north up Norway’s magnificently serrated coastline. En route, stop at Åndalsnes where the Troll Wall cliff plummets for 1,000 vertical metres and sail through the sublime Lofoten Islands whose jagged peaks tower above red-walled “rorbuer” (fishermen’s cottages). Lively Tromsø has hip restaurants, Earth’s northernmost university and the splendid Arctic Cathedral before you cross to Bjørnøya, Svalbard’s southern tip where puffins, kittiwakes and auks wheel around dramatic cliffs. Next stop, Spitsbergen, is around just 820 miles from the North Pole, before you sail up vast Kongsfjord to Ny-Ålesund, ground zero for climate scientists. Spot walruses, beluga whales and polar bears before turning around for more memorable stops on the return leg to Bergen.
From £3,855pp (flights extra); hurtigruten.com
A PASSAGE TO (AUTHENTIC) INDIA
Central India village life
Indian holidays usually focus on blockbuster attractions – Rajasthan’s palaces, Goa’s beaches – but few dive beneath the surface of this diverse and complex country. A new nine-night journey from award-laden responsible tourism operator Village Ways, aims to change that. It lets you immerse yourself in daily life among three tribal forest villages in the central states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Staying in community-owned guesthouses, the trip starts in Lamna, dining on vegetarian dishes and learning about local farming, fishing and cooking, with the communal electric tuk-tuk for exploration. After three nights, guests transfer to Umargohan, home of the Baiga and Gond people, where forest walks reveal the medicinal properties of trees and plants, with evening song and dance performances. A final stay in Lagma Mukki provides a dawn safari in Kanha National Park, residence of the well-camouflaged Bengal tiger.
Forests and Fables from £1,297pp including full-board accommodation, guiding and transfers; villageways.com
FOLLOW THAT HERD
Luxury Botswana safari
To escape the madding crowd, mobile safaris – canvas tents erected, dismantled, moved and reassembled in the tradition of Victorian expeditions – let you camp in prime game-viewing territory, free of humanity. In the experienced hands of acclaimed guide John Barclay, this luxury Botswana safari links three fabulous wilderness locations with helicopter transfers: an adventure favoured by A-listers including Taylor Swift. You’re choppered into camp one among Nxai Pan’s grass plains and salt flats: a mesmerising world teeming with wildlife including honey badgers; its baobab trees immortalised by Victorian artist Thomas Baines. Moving onto the eastern fringe of the Okavango Delta – 20,000 square kilometres of meandering channels and palm islands – your camp now overlooks the Khwai River close to a hyena den, before a final move to Mboma Lagoon in the delta’s Moremi Reserve: Africa’s “Predator Capital” with prolific bird and animal populations, including rare wild dog.
From around £10,700pp (not including transfers or international flights); barclaystenner.com
A DEEPER DIVE
Mexican island
Tune out, tone up. Camped on the honey-blonde sands of Espiritu Santo, an island without phone signal, wifi or holiday hordes, SwimTrek’s Mexico break majors in uninterrupted serenity and daily swims in the 26C water. One of the Unesco-listed islands in the Sea of Cortez, described as the “world’s aquarium” by Jacques Cousteau, you’ll join 900 species of fish, 90 of them endemic, and 30 species of marine mammal including dolphins and migratory whales. The daily three-kilometre swims (maximum five kilometres) visit Bahía San Gabriel, whose former pearl beds were immortalized in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Isla Ballena’s prolific marine life and Los Islotes’s sea lion colony. Combine them with coastal desert hikes and fabulous birdwatching, spotting everything from cormorants and pelicans, to hummingbirds and hawks. If you’ve energy to spare, the camp also has stand-up paddleboards and kayaks for further exploration.
From £1,885pp (not including flights and transfers); swimtrek.com
BEARS, BELUGAS AND BIRDS
Canadian wildlife
Stalking polar bears on foot isn’t for the faint-hearted. Expect your guide at Seal River Heritage Lodge on Hudson Bay’s west coast – one of only two places to offer the experience – to have a pocketful of rocks, starting pistol, pepper spray and shotgun, along with knowledge on body language around the 1,000-pound predators with meat-hook claws. The cosy full-board lodge is perfectly placed to spot many of the thousand or so bears that swim ashore from the melting ice sheet each summer to forage on tundra vegetation. Handily, they’re not alone. Simultaneously, around 4,000 beluga whales visit the bay’s many river mouths to calve, moult and feed on small oily capelin close to your rigid inflatable boat. And back on land there are bald eagles with 6-foot wing spans like airborne manta rays and one-tonne nests. Congratulations, you can now tick these off your wildlife wishlist.
From £9,300pp (including transfers from Winnipeg, not international flights); churchillwild.com
THE RIVIERA LESS TRAVELLED
Albanian Riviera
Planning to grab some Mediterranean spring sunshine? On the photogenic Adriatic coast, it’s usually Croatia basking in the spotlight, with neighbouring Montenegro receiving increasing plaudits for a supporting role. Lately however, it’s the next stop south, once reclusive Albania, that’s popping up on the radar. A new eight-day walking tour navigates the Albanian Riviera’s tranquil coastal paths and secluded beaches, embracing centuries-old stone villages, Byzantine castles and Cold War sites. As well as hiking along the Karaburun Peninsula, meeting place of the Adriatic and Ionian seas – once a bunker-strewn military base – you’ll follow shepherds’ trails weaved through Llogara National Park’s pine forests and descend vertiginous Gjipe Canyon to a dreamy isolated beach. There’s also Himara’s ruined castle dating back to 5BC, and a trail through meadows and olive terraces to Old Qeparo’s hilltop village with widescreen views across the Prussian-blue sea to Corfu.
From £1,295pp (flights not included); explore.co.uk
THE SILK IRON ROAD
Central Asia’s railway
Luxurious transport, compelling history and epic scenery collide on this eight-day Central Asian rail odyssey. Carried by the fully en-suite Golden Eagle, a self-proclaimed ‘five-star hotel on wheels’ with opulent décor and panoramic windows, it departs from Ashgabat, the Karakum Desert’s Las Vegas, making an awe-inspiring night-time visit to the “Door of Hell”, Darvaza’s crater of perpetually burning gas. Entering Uzbekistan, one Silk Road showstopper follows another, a symphony of mosques, madrassah and minarets from ancient mud-walled Khiva to Bukhara and its iconic Kalyan Mosque and fortified Ark, once home to despotic emirs, and finally Samarkand, fabled capital of the Timur’s Mongol empire, with Registan Square’s astounding madrassah and Ulugh Beg, an early Islamic astronomical observatory. After Tashkent’s soviet modernity, the Golden Eagle crosses Kazakhstan’s vast grassy plains beneath the distant Tian Shan peaks, finishing in Almaty with its 19th-century wooden cathedral.
From £11,695pp (including transfers, not international flights); goldeneagleluxurytrains.com
SOUTH AMERICAN HIGH
Ultimate road trip
Surreal, eye-popping landscapes with volcanoes galore, historic colonial towns and world-famous salt flats: Argentina’s Andes and Bolivia’s barren Altiplano make for a memorable guided 4WD road trip. After cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, fly north for the elegant baroque architecture of “Salta the Beautiful” before driving into Humahuaca Gorge’s terracotta-hued stratified rock including Purmamarca’s seven-coloured hill. Journey Latin America’s private 15-day trip pushes on past wilderness canyons onto Bolivia Uyuni’s vast, mind-bending salt flats punctuated by volcanic islands, before reaching Potosi – the one of the world’s highest cities at 4,090m – beneath Cerro Rico (Rich Hill) with its labyrinthine silver mines. After strikingly lovely Sucre, the country’s legislative capital with well-preserved white churches, cloisters and mansions, a final flight hop reaches La Paz, Bolivia’s high-altitude capital with its renowned witch doctor’s quarter, allowing for an excursion to serene Lake Titicaca and cruise to Sun Island.
From £4,650pp (international flights extra); journeylatinamerica.com
