Balkans Tours in September 2027

An awesome variety of Great Wall walking - the best part of the trip. Challenging at times but more than doable for the moderately fit. Fantastic to get away from the usual busy parts of the wall and have the chance to get away from it all. Spectacular!

Superb holiday, excellent itinerary, so many wonderful sights to see. The holiday ran like clockwork not a moment was wasted, our Guide Antonio had a fantastic knowledge of the history of Sicily and his passion was infectious. Very good Group and I think that everyone had a fantastic holiday.

This itinerary allowed us to see all the important sites in each of the cities we visited (e.g. St. Peter's in Rome, the Grand Canal in Venice). Yet, it provided free time for us to explore on our own and find some other gems. too (e.g. the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence). It was a perfect balance of touring with the group, time on the bus and free time.

This cycle tour covered a small area of Provence. Delightful scenery, a couple of challenging hills, but doable for most cyclists. Loved the variety of nature, Roman archaeology. I highly recommend this tour

This was an excellent holiday which happily we returned from some days before the UK advised against all travel to Madagascar. Hopefully problems will be resolved enough for people to go in the future. Our tour leader Armand was truly excellent. Our bus driver and assistant did a great job on awful roads. Our group was a lovely group of 9 guests and worked well together. I was amazed how many lemurs we got to see and how close. The forests, reserves and parks are very good and the guides excellent. The evening walks were good as well as the daytime ones. The Tritriva crater lake and the Ranohira canyon area are spectacular and not to be missed. There were chances to experience local culture and see some dancing. The cultural evening at Ambositra was particularly good. I chose the optional snorkelling trip followed by lunch on the beach and can recommend these highly. The hotels are typical of Explore, pretty good on the whole but not top of the range. Minor niggles occur in the odd place such as only one towel for a couple, poor bar service etc. but mostly very good. The best hotel was Relais de la Reine near Ranohira, both for location and service. Most of the others very good too. But Artisan hotel at Ambositra had a very pokey little room and Feon'ny Ala Bungalows at Andasibe was truly awful with leaky plumbing. I would recommend taking a head torch with plenty of batteries and not just for evening walks. Most of the hotels have their own generators but don't always run them the whole time the electricity is off. Even when the electricity is on the lighting is often poor so the head torch helps. The food I found was generally excellent quality but often the portion size was rather big for me. I used a watertogo filter bottle to drink tap water from and bottled water for cleaning teeth and used regular hand sanitiser especially after handling money and I didn't suffer any stomach bug, though a few people did. A unique holiday - put it on your bucket list!

I’ve been with Explore many times, and this trip was right up there, Fotis the tour leader was so enthusiastic and we all became good friends, one of the best.