Hot answers tagged trekking
16
Don't book before you get there. The prices quoted by silent1mezzo are staggeringly expensive, compared to what you can get once you're actually in Peru. Most 5day tours should run for less than $200USD.
The first step is to get to Cusco. You can fly there (landing there is pretty spectacular) or you can get a cheap bus from pretty much anywhere else in the ...
8
That's the kind of gear I'd use when going to hike well into subzero temperatures. Attempting to hike in such a gear at +20°C, especially in humid air, you'll not be comfortable at all. It's a total overkill. Especially the pants.
What I'd use for such a hike:
t-shirt, preferably non-cotton stay-dry kind;
soft shell fleece jacket (Windstopper or ...
7
Hikr.org is a popular hiking portal mainly for the Alps, but there are also two reports about Adam's peak. Both of them state that it isn't a very difficult hike, and one of them even classifies the route in the official hiking scale. The report states it is a T2, which means:
T2 – Mountain Hikes
Paths with continuous marked-out route. In case it is ...
7
Just came back from my trekking vacation in Nepal.
It's possible (and simple) to get to the lake without camping, using local guesthouses. It requires no special means like helicopters, and it even helps with acclimatization before the Thorung La Pass.
7
Gap Adventures has tonnes of Machu Picchu trips (80 in the search) that go around and trek through Machu Picchu. They're not overly expensive (21 days is only $2800). Gap always have very experience guides.
Contiki Tours also have a few trips through Machu Picchu. I haven't been on one of their trips so I can't vouch for them. Contiki looks a little more ...
6
My wife and I booked through Barking Gecko Travel last January and had a really great experience. Barking Gecko Travel is operated by Travel Hub, so I think it would be fair to expect reviews about Travel Hub may translate over to Barking Gecko.
The tour guides provided spoke great English and we really felt that we were being taken into the jungle and ...
6
Well firstly most buses won't go directly to El Calafate. You'll likely have to change buses, and likely will want to - it's a long way!
However, a convenient stopping point could be Puerto Madryn (Chubut). It's a great little beach town, with the Valdez Peninsula - and I kid you not - you can sit on the hostel balcony and point at the whales as they come ...
5
I'll answer my own question after staying in Rio and doing the trekking.
This trail is completly safe in all sense. There are police controls in the first part of the trail (the Pista Cláudio Coutinho) and in the upper part (the cable-car station). In reality, all the area is a militar settlement, so I doubt that anybody try to attack you there.
In the ...
5
There are three routes.
Hatton route.
Rathnapura route
Kuruwita route
Easiest and most common route is Hatton route. If you go this way Slippers are the best.(Thats what the locals use)
If u want to get more jungle experience, you should go in other routes. Better to use water proof boots.
And please consider this is one of the most sacred places ...
5
I trekked part of the Lares for 3 days and 2 nights at the end of February. We crossed 2 passes of around 4000m high during this excursion.
Itinerary:
Day 1: Leave Ollantaytambo at 7am by van and we reach our destination around 10am. You also climb your first pass before the end of the day.
Day 2: Wake up early at 5am and leave camp at 7am for your ...
5
Short answer, you can't.
However, you can at least make sure they have an official license, and any other accreditation which might lend some credence to their claims.
Look for ones that are licensed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), and consider googling for the tour company plus some key words, to see if anyone has mentioned them or complained ...
5
Goodness, you're not kidding, it's hard to find.
I can offer the following:
Barking Gecko Tours: 2 Day 1 Night Trek and 3 Day 2 Night Trek, both which certainly don't MENTION elephants, despite having a picture of one on their banners. They are officially licensed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).
4
Answering from search results since this question has gone unanswered for so long. It seems that most organised tours are 18-20 day trekking tours, and yes, there are options to stay in guest houses as this itinerary seems to suggest. You could also see it without trekking on helicopter tours of the region (such as this one, same details show up on multiple ...
4
Amazing Thailand has much to say on the subject.
Key points:
Tourist attractions throughout the country will often have a resident elephant, however serious trekkers and elephant riders will need to go to the northern regions of Thailand for a richer experience.
The cost will generally be around A$15 per person for an hour ride. A full day trekking will ...
4
The answer to my own question will not deal with all issues mentioned, but because there are no other answers I'd like to share my experiences.
I wasn't personally camping in Georgia, but I met people that were camping and I saw people camping.
Georgia still has an underdeveloped tourist base, most of the sleeping places are in hotels (big cities) and ...
4
You only have 12 days. If you take a bus round-trip from Buenos Aires to El Calafate, you're going to waste 2-3 days getting there and 2-3 days getting back. That's almost half of your vacation on a bus! On top of that, a brief check I did of the price on the Andesmar bus via Puerto Madryn shows a round trip price of around $700 USD (depends on the seats) ...
3
I've never been there myself, but I'll try to answer your question as well as I can.
There are several YouTube videos that give insight into the hike. Here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nw7rblN00
It appears to be very steep in some parts, with ropes built in to facilitate getting up. However, it is of course difficult to come to a conclusion ...
3
I'm not brilliantly positioned to answer this, but since nobody else has...
So I walked a small section of the route back in 2000 or so (Sounkyo Onsen to Kurodake and back) as a day trip, just enough to realize that it's a pretty "serious" national park and you'll want to be well prepared for a serious hike:
As you can see, the problem is not that it's ...
3
While I can't (yet) find a central list of success rates, numerous operators boast theirs on their websites.
However, as some sites point out:
Even though outfitters and tour operators flaunt high success rates,
official statistics indicate that a very high percentage of trekkers
turn back before summiting Uhuru Peak. It is quite "an
...
3
I agree with most of what Mark wrote. However, instead of visiting websites of individual bus companies or going to the Retiro bus terminal, there's a far better way to find out the prices and schedules of intercity buses anywhere in Argentina:
plataforma10.com
Just enter origin, destination and date, and hit "buscar". If you want, with credit card you ...
3
Another possibility is meetup.com. Here in Vancouver, at least, there are several travel groups on it, and many of them schedule trips together.
You can also try the Lonely Planet Thorntree forums, and see who else is travelling in the same area, or even put up a post there for people to join you. It's fairly common to see that on there.
3
Because this does not involve providing a service or product, but something that's very much open to personal taste, I would think it much harder to actually maintain a successful platform in comparison to, say, couchsurfing.
That said, these communities or services do exist, though I have no personal experience with them. Here are a few:
...
3
A possible schedule and route is mentioned on Wikitravel's South Iceland page when talking about the Skógafoss waterfall:
Skógafoss is 60 m tall and 25 m wide and comes from the river of
Skógá. The falls have been protected since 1987. Access to the falls
is open all year round and there is no admission. A trail leads to the
top of the falls (via ...
3
We (a party of two) have just returned from a trek in the Khoa Sok national park in Thailand.
The first portion of the trek included an elephant experience. We expected to maybe have a short ride on an elephant, then feed them... etc etc.
What we instead found was this: Arriving at the elephant "sanctuary" we were plonked on top of a random elephant. The ...
2
I'd be worried about a tour operator that only charged $200 for the Inca Trail. Some of the cheap operators underpay their porters. Since their the ones doing all of the hard work, it's worth putting in some effort to find an operator that treats the porters well. We went with SAS Travel in December of 2010. It was significantly off season so it rained ...
2
Darter Photography conducts a photography tour in Lahaul-Spiti region. There is one tour planned in July 13 - 20, 2013
PS: I'm not affiliated to this group. One of the co-founders of Darters is a friend.
1
If you want to know, just do it.
I don't mean exploring the world, but just leave your home during 24h without money. Learn from that experience: what was missing? how far did you go? did you succeed? How did you manage to eat, sleep and move?
Then try it during 48h, one week, one month...
By the way, travel and (lack of) money are not directly linked. ...
1
http://photographyonthemove.com conducts pretty good photography workshops in small groups.
Eg: http://photographyonthemove.com/photography-workshop-spiti-valley-himachal-tourism-lahaul-treks/
This was a 11 day tour in the Tibet region.
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