Top Culture Trips for Testing Your Survival Skills

Ecuador has just about every kind of landscape imaginable, from towering mountains and snow-capped volcanoes to the thick tropical shrubbery of the Amazon rainforest. You’ll learn to face all of these elements on our eight-day loop trip, starting and ending in Quito. You’ll also learn just about every method of getting across these ever-changing landscapes, from tackling Cotopaxi National Park on horseback and cycling through the stunning Baños Waterfall Route, to crashing down Jatunyacu River on a whitewater raft and trekking through the Amazon rainforest. On our last full day you’ll even get expert guidance on how essential oils are extracted from Amazonian plants to create medicine.

You could argue that the true test for any survivalist is making it out in the desert. Follow in the adventurous footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia and join our eight-day epic traversing the unique landscapes of Jordan’s extraordinary landscape. We’ll start easy with a street food and wine extravaganza in Amman, before picking up some crucial desert cooking skills with an authentic masterclass at a local family’s home. Test your heat-durability as we hike through the stunning remains of the ancient city of Petra, before heading out to Wadi Rum, where much of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was actually filmed. This is the real outback of Jordan, with vast stretches of desert interrupted only by giant red-rock structures. It’s a truly cinematic part of the world, which we’ll explore via 4×4, before settling down for the evening at a desert campsite. Having gotten a glimpse into the Bedouin way of life, we’ll cool off in the Red Sea, before ending the trip in the surreal surrounds of the Dead Sea.

You might have the comfort of train rides to take you from A to B on this two-week epic across Southeast Asia, but we’ll have to get creative to get through some of Thailand and Laos’ trickier terrains. Before the outdoor action really gets going we’ll learn all about regional cuisine with a Thai cooking masterclass. Then it’s out into the jungles of Northern Thailand, where we’ll learn how to bamboo raft down Wang River, before settling for the evening at a jungle campsite, where a barbecue under the stars awaits. Across the border in Laos we’ll journey into the heart of darkness with a river cruise down the Mekong, stopping off at rural villages to learn about their communities and, most importantly, their rice whisky-making techniques. Having trekked through rainforest and kayaked along the Nam Song River, we’ll return to the comfort of train travel for an overnight journey back to Bangkok.