Nine truly weird and wonderful experiences offered by escorted tours
uritours.com
Become a master dog musher in Mongolia
There's more to mushing than simply attaching a clutch of canines to a sledge and expecting them to drag you up the nearest mountain. Sign up for KE Adventure's Lake Khuvsgul dog sled adventure and you'll spend eight days mushing your way across Mongolia, driving your own dog sled along a route that includes a circumnavigation of frozen Lake Khuvsgul. Accommodation is a combination of yurts and cabins, and additional activities include fishing masterclasses, during which you'll learn how to catch and cook your very own seafood supper.
keadventure.com
A deep dive into voodoo
Voodoo, it turns out, is very much misunderstood. The predominant religion in much of West Africa, it's rooted in animism, and the belief that everything – from animals to places – has a spirit. Book Wild Frontiers Travel's Voodoo Explorer escorted tour through Togo and Benin and you'll learn about voodoo traditions by attending ceremonies, meeting practitioners and visiting a fetish market in Lomé, Togo's capital. Think of these as a Togolese Unichem – open-air markets where stalls are stacked with dried animal parts, ranging from crocodile heads to gorilla hands. Visitors consult healers before being prescribed traditional remedies to cure ailments or enhance certain characteristics – for example, gorilla hands are especially popular with those wishing to improve their football skills.
Meet the Masai
Get lucky (or unlucky, depending on your outlook) during this Kenya-based tour and you'll be offered a tipple beloved by the Masai – a cup of warm goat's blood, revered as a great source of protein and for its nutritional and energy-boosting benefits. Highlights of this 14-day exploration of Kenya's Masai lands include a trek through the Chyulu Hills, the chance to learn about Masai warriors' traditions during a stopover at a remote tented camp and a visit to Amboseli National Park, home to lions, rhinos and leopards. Masai warriors will be your guides for much of the tour, which includes hikes up to 2000m above sea level. Perhaps that cup of goat's blood could come in handy, after all ...
keadventure.com
Get off the beaten path in Japan
Don't get us wrong – we're huge fans of Japanese hotspots such as Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo but we're also firm believers that venturing off the beaten path reaps huge rewards. Bag a place on Inside Japan Tours' Northern Soul tour and you'll visit areas few Japan-bound visitors ever reach, including Miyagi Prefecture's pine-fringed Matsushima Bay, Nikko, famous for its sacred mountains and connections with Shintoism, and the Sanriku Coast region, known for its abundance of seafood (sea urchin is the most sought-after speciality here). Expect plenty of opportunities to learn about traditional skills – our favourite example is the taiko drumming masterclass.
All future hikes will look distinctly plain after you take an eight-day trek through Morocco with the Aït Atta, Morocco's last nomadic tribe. You'll enjoy plenty of interactions with locals and countless opportunities to learn about their way of life such as collecting firewood, herding sheep and loading the pack animals, which are a crucial part of the Aït Atta's seasonal migration. It's an incredibly popular tour with photographers because of the diverse landscapes, which include the Tifdassine Valley, famous for its almond blossoms and jagged peaks, and the summit of Jebel Kouaouch, which you'll reach via a footpath made from solidified lava.
Rock out at a Chad music festival
Glastonbury, Burning Man and Coachella have become somewhat passé. For a music festival with wow factor, join Native Eye's annual visit to Chad's Gerewol Festival, an annual celebration that takes place in October and is of great importance to Chad's semi-nomadic Wodaabe people. Here you'll be treated to delicious feasts, some seriously impressive dancing and beautiful makeup – during the festival, local women don ornate jewellery and apply colourful face paint in the hope of finding a partner. A pre-festival visit to Chad's capital, N'Djamena, offers further opportunities to learn about this fascinating country.
nativeeyetravel.com
During Intrepid's 11-day tour you'll travel overland from Tbilisi in Georgia to Yerevan in Armenia, but Georgia's and Armenia's capitals are far from the only highlights – stops along the route have been handpicked to help you get under the skin of these fascinating countries. In Georgia, for example, you'll visit a network of caves dating back to the 1100s as well as the ghost town of Tskhaltubo, famous for its abandoned sanatoriums, while in Armenia you'll check out the remote Khor Virap monastery and will toast the country during a wine-tasting session at a local farm.
Love Asia but desperate to explore beyond Bali, Thailand and its other big hitters? Join G Adventures' deep dive into the culture of Tana Toraja, a landlocked chunk of Indonesia's South Sulawesi province. It's famous for its various deeply-rooted traditions, including elaborate funerary traditions typified by funeral ceremonies designed to honour the departed, and the practice of burying loved ones in cliffside tombs, typically guarded by wooden effigies known as Tau-Tau.
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NZ Herald
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Former envoys share their experiences of one of the strangest and most repressive corners of the world
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Hungry for answers in a Budapest hotel
Budapest. I last came here in the 1980s when Hungary was still ostensibly communist, part of the Warsaw Pact and under the grim governing eye of the Russians. And I met an old man who had fought in World War 2, and who conspiratorially showed me a black and white photograph of himself as a young soldier sitting astride a toppled statue of Stalin. "Me," he said, jabbing the picture with his finger, and he giggled like a naughty child then glanced around in fear. Forty years later the country has the same landlocked climate — the afternoon heat is fierce and it is only early summer — and the same impenetrable language that owes no debt to any other, but politically it has flipped, has crossed the divide, is now a paid-up member of the EU, a capitalist Western democracy, its people free and self-determining. And yet, and yet ... Our last night in the city. We have toured the sights, climbed to Buda Castle, lunched by the Danube, seen parliament lit up at night, ridden the metro and the buses and the trams, eaten the goulash, drunk the beer and wallowed in the thermal pools as the Romans did 2000 years ago. And now a taxi is booked to take us to the airport in the early morning and it would be sensible to go to bed, but the bar is still open in the hotel lobby and what's a holiday for? In the quiet of midnight the receptionist doubles as barman. He's in his late 20s, heavily built, gentle-natured, kind-faced. "You are leaving in the morning," he says. "Yes. We have had a good time." "That's good." "Yes." A pause. There's just the two of us. "So," I say, using a line I often use to set the conversational ball in motion, "where will you be in 10 years' time?" He is surprised. He looks me full in the face, wondering perhaps whether I am serious, whether he is really being invited to take the leap from commercial courtesy to personal honesty. He is. "Will you still be here?" "Oh sir, I have a little daughter 1 year old and I am worried." And like the old man with the photograph of Stalin toppled, he lowers his voice and looks around to ensure we are alone. "Things is not good." I wish I could have taken notes. I would like to capture his words exactly, his halting earnest English for which he apologises repeatedly, but which, as I point out, is a sight better than my Hungarian. What he lays out, sentence by hard-won sentence, is a first-hand account of the old conundrum of political power: that those who want power shouldn't have it; but those who don't, are often happy to give it to them. So it is that the Russians, having finally thrown off the totalitarian yoke in 1990, now three decades later find themselves in thrall to Putin, robber baron and president for life. And here in Hungary the people have willingly given power to Viktor Orban, another robber baron, and they seem unlikely to shake him off before he and his cronies have bled the country dry. Orban has achieved his aims by the standard authoritarian recipe, the half-truths, the vilification of the outsider, the nationalist rara and all the rest, which is as old as the emperors, as old as power itself. Auden captured any and every Orban in six lines: Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. What's needed, says the barman, is for his compatriots to take responsibility for their own fate, but he fears that they won't, that they lack the mindset. He worries for his country and he worries for his daughter. And as he tells me all this, the look on his face, of pained honesty, would tear any heart. I listen and nod and tut through a pint of cold Hungarian beer and a couple of whiskies. And when I finally say that I need to go to bed, he clasps my hand in both his and thanks me as if I've just saved his daughter's life. Though all I've done is to ask a question. Which he both has and hasn't answered. • Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
