House of Travel Riccarton

Scandinavia and the Northern Lights

January 28 to February 17, 2024
CONFIRMED DEPARTURE
ONE TWIN-SHARE SPACE FOR A WOMAN TRAVELLER STILL AVAILABLE

This tour is going to take us through Norway, Sweden and Finland and is timed to give us the very best chance of seeing the Northern Lights. This can never be guaranteed but there are so many other remarkable experiences and sights on this amazing tour.

We’re going to start with a tour of Sweden’s capital Stockholm. including a visit to see the 17th century Vasa galleon, before taking an overnight ferry to Finland’s capital Helsinki. Then we head north right on to the Arctic Circle to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, to visit a reindeer farm and Santa’s Village. Then we will spend a night in a glass-roofed igloo (ensuring a warm, luxurious bed from which to look for the Northern Lights!) and have an option to try snow-mobiling. At Lake Inari we get to try ice-fishing before crossing into Norway to visit the home of the Sami people of northern Norway.

We’ll eventually reach almost 70 degrees north at Alta and stay in an amazing ice hotel. I’ve included a ride with a sled dog team, a visit to a Sami family and then, in Tromso, we’ll be boarding a cruise for a three-night journey through the Norwegian fjords to Bergen and finally fly to Oslo.

Our cruise will take us through magnificent fjords and includes the Alesund Archipelago, taking us away from all possible light pollution and giving us yet another chance to experience the Northern Lights.

Vietnam and Cambodia

March 27 to April 15, 2024
CONFIRMED DEPARTURE
ONE TWIN-SHARE SPACE FOR A WOMAN TRAVELLER STILL AVAILABLE

This tour is specifically designed to appeal to people who are looking for destinations closer to home. I am also a great fan of river cruising so a special feature of this tour will be a seven-day (approx) cruise on the lower Mekong River. There will be many day excursions from the ship that will introduce us to local life in both Vietnam and Cambodia. Along with this cruise will be tours of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and, of course, a visit to the Angor Wat, the largest religious site in the world, a World Heritage site and possibly the most important destinations for visitors in all of South-East Asia. We will also travel to northern Vietnam to see the city of Hanoi and join a two-night cruise around the wonders of Halong Bay.

Central America Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama

May 2024
FULL ITINERARY READY SOON

I love Central America and this will be my third tour to the region. Costa Rica is famed for its wildlife and stunning scenery and we’ll be travelling through this country with my wonderful guide and good friend German Rojas, who I know many of you have had the pleasure of travelling with before. Guatemala is also on the itinerary where we will visit one of the best preserved and most beautiful colonial-era towns in all of the Americas, Antigua, stay beside the high-altitude Lake Atitlan and visit probably the best Mayan ruins in all of Central America, Tikal. Details of the third Central American country on the tour will be available soon.

Epic Eastern Canada

June 2024
FULL ITINERARY READY SOON

This tour is going to include most, if not all of the following regions and islands – New Brunswick Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Foundland and Labrador. It’s also been scheduled to give us the best chances to see whales, puffins and if we’re very lucky, icebergs. There will be quintessential coastal scenery, picturesque fishing villages, history and wildlife.

Zambia, Botswana and Namibia

September 2024
DETAILS AVAILABLE LATER THIS YEAR

We’ll be visiting one of the best and most underrated national parks in all of Africa, South Luangwa in Zambia and, of course, the Victoria Falls. We will also be spending time in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, one of the world’s great natural wonders, and touring through some of the wildlife and scenic highlights of Namibia. I love Africa and if I could only ever do one more trip in my life, it would almost certainly be an African safari. This will be a tour of great contrasts from deserts to deltas to vast plains and will offer us a chance to see a huge variety of wildlife.

Southern India

November 2024
MORE INFO AVAILABLE LATER THIS YEAR

It probably seems an age ago but many of you who came with me on my last tour to India asked me and our wonderful Indian guide Kush to come up with a tour to South India. And we have! We’re going to start in Chennai (formerly Madras), visit the most stunning Hindu temples in all of India, experience the hill country with its tea and spice plantations, visit the extraordinary Chettinad region, cruise the Kerala backwaters and as a grand finale see the Mysore Palace, one of the most stunning and largest royal residences in all of India. If you are interested in any of these tours, please do register your interest soon as some of these tours will have very restricted numbers. Expressing interest in the tours doesn’t commit you to anything but does mean you will be first to receive the full itinerary and prices as they become available.