When Dervla Murphy set off to cycle from Ireland to India in 1963, there was no route to follow. When Jane Goodall first walked into Gombe, no one had studied wild chimpanzees up close. When the earliest travellers crossed into Namibia’s desert interior, they didn’t know what they’d find.
That was the point.
Something in them needed to go where the path wasn’t clear yet. To see a place before it learned to expect visitors. To be first — or close to it.
There’s a restlessness when everything in life feels mapped out. An urge to do something different, something others haven’t done. So many routes have been walked a thousand times — and they’re wonderful — but what about the paths that haven’t? The places people have heard of but don’t really know. Destinations that still carry the shape of thousands of years, unchanged.
You might know the feeling. The pull towards somewhere that’s still entirely itself.
The great explorers and pioneers went first, and often alone. You don’t have to. That’s what we offer. We go first and find places that are still themselves — and we know what that actually feels like.
There’s a woman in Ethiopia who performs a coffee ceremony that takes three unhurried hours. She’s not doing it for you. She’s doing it because this is what she does, in the place where she’s always done it. The smoke, the smell, the patience of it — none of it has been speeded up or explained or adjusted for visitors.
We walk and cycle these routes first, test what holds, work out what’s possible. Then we take you there — with the structure of a charity challenge behind you and a group alongside you.
We’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. These places are becoming rarer. That’s why we keep looking.
Five frontiers where the world hasn’t adjusted yet.
Cycle Ethiopia – Save £125pp
High plateau air, thin and sharp. Volcanic rock under your wheels. The Blue Nile gorge dropping beside you — not a viewing platform, just the edge. Villages where your arrival is a question, not a transaction. Coffee forests where the three-hour ritual happens because it happens, not because you’re there to see it.
Ethiopia hasn’t shaped itself for visitors. You experience it as it is.
For those who want to arrive before the routes are smoothed.
Trek Galapagos – Save £175pp
The residents of the Galápagos haven’t learned to fear humans… yet. Blue-footed boobies don’t fly away when you pass. Giant tortoises lumber through the mud, ignoring you. Marine iguanas hold their ground on the lava.
Walking here feels prehistoric. You trek over active volcanoes and stark lava fields where the earth is still being formed. A rare privilege to walk through a world where you are completely irrelevant. You won’t be the first. You may be among the last.
For those who want to see nature before it adjusted to us.
Trek Ethiopia — Simien Mountains – Save £125pp
Knife-edge escarpments. A thousand-metre drop where the land simply ends. Gelada baboons in the grass, unbothered — they’ve seen humans before, but not many, and not often. The wind across the plateau carries nothing but itself.
This is Africa’s Grand Canyon, except almost no one you know has stood here. The trails haven’t been worn smooth. The landscape hasn’t been managed. It’s just the Simiens, being what they’ve always been.
For those who want to walk where few have walked yet.
Trek Borneo – NEW for 2027
Rainforest that has been here for 130 million years. The smell of it — dense, alive, unmanaged. Orangutans moving through the canopy above, not for an audience but because this is their path. Rivers that wind through jungle where Western feet rarely walk.
This is primary rainforest. The real thing. Not a reserve, not a tour, not an interpretation centre. Just the forest, still being what it was before anyone arrived to look at it.
For those who want to experience what untouched actually feels like.
Trek the Maasai – Save £125pp
There is a different rhythm when you are on foot in the Rift Valley. You are on the same level as the wildlife. You walk with Maasai guides who know this land because they live it—reading the wind, listening to the grass. The red earth is under your boots. The sounds are clearer. It feels like the Africa that existed before the maps were drawn.
For those who want to move through a landscape that hasn’t been altered.
