Tailor-Made Travel
We are acknowledged experts at arranging bespoke tours on the Silk Road. How can we help you?
Tailor-made trips are our passion.
Specialists in Tailor-Made Tours
Do you want to embark on a tailor-made adventure along the Silk Road? Then you’ve come to the right place. Bespoke experiences are at the heart of what we do, and there’s nothing we love more than planning a one-off trip.
Bespoke Experiences Along the Silk Road
With years of experience in organising expeditions, TV shoots and luxury tours, we know what it takes to organise something genuinely unique. In fact, several of our Silk Road experiences have been – or will be – world firsts. And that’s what your trip should be – personal to you rather than off-the-peg.
Perhaps you have an interest in wildlife conservation, in luxury train travel, in white water rafting, or in living with nomads.
Maybe you want to organise a tailor-made adventure focusing on Uzbek ceramics, or fancy seeing a glacier and riding camels across the Kyzylkum Desert.
Or you might like us to organise a bespoke expedition including luxury yurt camps and your own chef? No problem.
Fine-tuned to your Style of Adventure
Whether it’s a luxury trip to Uzbekistan, a sixty-day Silk Road Odyssey or a tailor-made adventure in Kazakhstan’s Wild West, we love organising tailor-made journeys. We’ll organise every tiny detail, including:
Pairing you with the right guides
Booking you into the best restaurants
Organising your transport – whether it be by rails, land or sea
Arranging exclusive, bespoke experiences that reflect your interests and how you love to travel. This could be anything from meeting dancers from the Kyrgyz National Ballet to learning herbal lore in the High Pamirs.
Whether you want to meet Uzbekistan’s last woodblock carver, ride into the mountains with a Kyrgyz eagle hunter or meet a famous architect, we’ll do our utmost to deliver it.
What does it cost?
All of our tailor-made trips are designed from scratch, then whittled to perfection over a series of meetings and conversations with you.
We’ll start with a chat to find out what makes you tick and how you like to travel. From there, we work with you to create the perfect trip.
Weeks of work often go into a single tailor-made trip – from choosing which guides to pair you with, to researching which Kyrgyz opera singer will give you the best behind-the-scenes tour of the national theatre.
With our background in journalism and documentary making, we pride ourselves on our creativity and depth of research. There’s nothing we love more than poring over maps and winkling out new stories, places and people.
We only accept a limited number of guests each year, and all of our tailor-made trips are exclusively designed by Antonia and Marley.
All this precision and expertise does come at a price. Think of it as the difference between nipping in to Zara to buy a new outfit and having a new suit tailored on Jermyn Street. Of course our costs are dependent on where you’re going, how many people you’re travelling with and how many private yurt camps you want, but our bespoke trips start from £500 per person, per day for two or more travellers. For solo travellers, prices tend to start from around £750 per day. Once you’ve travelled with us, you’ll know that this is excellent value.
Ready to explore the Silk Road your way?
If you want to travel the Silk Road in your own style, then please feel free to get in touch. All you need is a general idea of how you like to travel, and what you want to experience. From there, we’ll do the work to turn a blank canvas into a detailed, original itinerary. We approach every tailor-made tour as if we’re writing a new story, putting it together to exactly reflect your interests, and we take great pride in doing so.
Below, you’ll find a smattering of ideas to help whet your whistle. Of course, they are by no means the extent of what we offer but hopefully this helps focus the thought process.
How the Process Works
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We will conduct a consultation via phone, Zoom or Whatsapp.
We will ask a series of detailed questions about you, your interests and hopes for the trip.
We will discuss your requirements, the type of trip you want and ensure we are able to deliver exactly what you need.
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When we’ve made sure that we can design the trip you want, we will send a broad-brush itinerary outline and provide a very rough estimate of trip costs per person per day before we proceed further.
With your agreement, we will now send an invoice for a £500 design fee, refundable from the final trip cost.
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At this stage, we will spend a significant amount of time using the notes from our discussions to design the perfect trip for you, and we will present this to you as a detailed proposal.
There will be some back-and-forth whilst we tweak it and ensure it matches your expectations.
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You’ll receive a tailor-made itinerary that matches your requirements.
At this stage we will make any final small adjustments before going ahead and finalising the price for the trip.
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We will issue a quotation to deliver the trip.
When this is agreed and your 20% booking deposit is paid, we will begin arranging the trip on your behalf.
Tailor-Made trips are naturally individual, but here’s some ideas to whet your appetite
The Ultimate Silk Road Odyssey
The Definitive Silk Road Tour
This thrilling, two-month tailor-made Silk Road tour will take you from the buzz of downtown Tbilisi to the balmy shores of Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea shore. Along the way, you’ll encounter the snow-streaked peaks of Kyrgyzstan’s ‘Heavenly Mountains’, the arid deserts of Uzbekistan’s Kyzyl Kum and the breathtaking cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.
With everything from high-altitude to high-culture, this bespoke itinerary has been designed to stretch the imagination and really get under the skin of these diverse Silk Road nations.
These ambitious, bespoke trips are our speciality – and your chance to feel like a modern day Marco Polo.
Visit Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia
On this superlative Silk Road odyssey you’ll wander among the turquoise domes of legendary Silk Road cities, explore medieval caravanserais, sleep in yurts under star-spangled skies and sip drinks beside azure mountain lakes. You’ll break bread with nomads, stand on mountaintops with Kyrgyz eagle hunters, watch master bee-keepers, ceramicists, weavers and many others at work and experience the smells, sights and flavours of some of the world’s best bazaars. This Silk Road tour will also give you the time and freedom to swim in high-altitude lakes and hike in some the most breath-taking landscapes on earth.
Of course, as this is a tailor-made Silk Road tour, you can choose which countries you visit, what you see and how long you’d like to travel for.
Magik-istan
Ready for a hefty dose of adventure?
Come and explore Dushanbe, the Pamirs and the Fann Mountains. Feel the history of ancient Sogdia and Bactria. Trace the tracks made by Alexander, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and many more.
This tailor-made Tajikistan trip will take you to soaring mountain ranges, historic Silk Road fortresses and turquoise lakes. But the highlight of this itinerary isn’t the stunning scenery – it’s the people who call this land home: from the mountain-dwelling Pamiris to those at the forefront of Dushanbe’s opera scene.
After spending some time in the country’s fast-developing capital, Dushanbe, you’ll discover Tajikistan’s little-explored hinterlands: from its northern shoulder – where you’ll visit secret Soviet spas – to its deep south, where the border with Afghanistan is inscribed with the remains of ancient civilizations. From here, you’ll head west into the mighty Pamirs, where you’ll stay in warm, characterful homestays and experience the pulse of everyday Pamiri life.
The Yagnob Valley
This Tajikistan tour will take you to the Yagnob valley, in the heart of the country’s Fann Mountains. Here, where stone houses cluster beneath walls of rock, you’ll meet the Yagnobi people, the last surviving remnants of the once powerful Sogdian race.
Legend has it that when a Sogdian boy was born, honey was placed in his mouth and glue on his palms. That way, he would speak sweet words and gold would stick to his hands. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a fitting fable for a people who accumulated great riches during the golden age of the Silk Road.
Embrace a Silk Road Adventure
Compared to some of its better known neighbours, Tajikistan remains a little-visited country. The roads can be bumpy, the food can be basic and the tourism infrastructure outside the capital can be somewhat haphazard. All of this, we think, make Tajikistan a fabulous place for adventure. If you love the thrill of new places, heart-bursting scenery and humbling hospitality, there are few countries that gladden the soul quite like this. This is a trip about people, culture and a place you’ll never forget.
Kazakhstan’s Wild West
A Tailor-Made Kazakhstan Tour
From historic Silk Road fortresses to stupendous desert vistas, this unique Kazakhstan tour will take you to the parts of the country only visited by a fortunate few.
From Nur Sultan, the country’s glittering capital, you’ll travel south to Shymkent, a city steeped in history and Silk Road culture. Here, amidst ancient fortresses and teeming bazaars, you’ll feel a sense of the peoples and cultures that shaped this nation at the heart of the Silk Road.
On this Kazakhstan tour, you’ll see the spectacular Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum, experience the pulse of modern Kazakh life and marvel at the ancient citadels of Sauran and Otrar.
Explore Mangistau
From the southern edge of Kazakhstan, you’ll travel north to the Caspian Sea city of Aktau, gateway to the fantastical landscapes of the Mangistau region.
A mind-blowingly beautiful wilderness of rock, mountain and desert, this forgotten corner of Central Asia is begging to explored. In Mangistau, you’ll drive across some of the most surreal, breath-taking vistas you might see anywhere on earth, sleep alongside pilgrims in underground Sufi mosques, scramble over rocks and explore mysterious necropolises.
A Team of Silk Road Specialists
This is just one tailor-made Kazakhstan tour that we can arrange for our guests. It can, of course, be altered to suit your spirit of adventure: perhaps you’d like to include other countries, follow it up with a trip to the Caucasus or upgrade to 5* hotels.
Whatever way you want to travel the Silk Road, let’s talk about it.
Wildlife of Tajikistan
Snow leopard tours in Tajikistan
Tajikistan may be small, but its mountains are home to numerous threatened species. Fewer than 7,000 snow leopards, Panthera uncia, remain across the high mountains of Asia; of these, 5% live in Tajikistan’s Pamir mountains, the third highest ecosystem on earth.
We’ve taken the BBC, Financial Times and a handful of hardy private clients to look for snow leopards in Tajikistan. We are the only people who run snow leopard tours here, and are experts in arranging luxury bespoke itineraries. We work directly with local conservationists, with a high percentage of each trip’s profits going back into grass-roots conservation efforts.
These extraordinary, unique trips will take you to some of the harshest and most beautiful environments on earth. You’ll also meet the amazing people working to secure a future for this iconic species. This is immersive, net-positive travel at its very best.
Look for brown bear, wolf, urial, Marco Polo sheep, birds galore…
As well as snow leopards, Tajikistan’s mountains are home to Brown bear, Eurasian wolf, Asiatic ibex, Bukharan markhor, urial, Marco Polo and over 400 species of bird. Our bespoke Tajikistan wildlife tours take you to high mountains, remote valleys and alpine lakes in search of these rare animals. With unparalleled guides, a strong sustainability ethos and landscapes to make your heart sing, these are the sort of tailor-made trips that really make us (and our clients) tick.
Experts in Tajikistan wildlife holidays
Conservation is very much our passion, and we’d love to share it with you. Get in touch to start designing your tailor-made Tajikistan wildlife tour.
Novruz - the Spring Festival
Visit Uzbekistan during the Spring festival of Novruz (March 2023)
This tailor-made tour will take you to Uzbekistan during the Novruz festival - also known as the Persian New Year. This immersive, culture-laden trip will incorporate a range of Novruz food and traditions; from eating sumalak and haft-sin to watching kupkari, the Central Asian version of polo. After seeing this, the Cowdray Gold Cup will never be the same again!
Classic Uzbekistan, curated for you
As well as enjoying the traditions and foods of Novruz, you’ll also enjoy the classic sights of Uzbekistan: you’ll wander the dusty alleyways of Khiva, the UNESCO-listed desert citadel; be awed by the turquoise domes of Samarkand and Bukhara; clamber among the ruins of ancient desert fortresses; haggle in bazaars; meet famous Uzbek designers; eat vibrant Central Asian food and follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Joanna Lumley and more.
An unforgettable itinerary filled with joy and culture
This bespoke trip, thoughtfully crafted to meet your specific wishes, will get you under the skin of this intriguing post-Soviet nation – feasting with families, celebrating the Spring Novruz festival and learning about the political and economic reforms of the last few years.
As with all of our tailor-made trips, your trip will be whittled to your every need and desire. This is among the best times of the year to enjoy Uzbekistan, and a rare chance to really experience this ancient Zoroastrian festival. If this sounds ideal, then drop us a line.
In the Shadow of Ararat
Eastern Turkiye, from the the Black Sea to its emerald hills
See a totally different side of Turkiye from Istanbul and the coasts. Of course, we love Istanbul but we can’t recommend Eastern Anatolia enough. Here, under vast skies, Turkiye’s borders collide with high peaks, in a landscape filled with deep nature and painted by a colourful history.
History in layers
We can organise your itinerary in any direction, but you could start in the south and travel north towards the Black Sea coast. Along the way you might visit Van Golu, Tatvan, Kars, Dogubeyazit and many other history-filled cities. Strands of the Silk Road wove this way but you’ll also find layers of Christian, pre-Christian and Islamic history. Indeed, the 12,000-year-old Gobekli Tepe ruins in South Western Anatolia are considered the worlds oldest temple complex, predating the Giza Pyramids by millennia.
Tea, whistling language and Black Sea
Further north from Kars are the formidable Kackar Mountains, their high passes snowbound except for during the summer months. In their shadow, stretching right down to the Black Sea, are forest-clad hills that provide some spectacular hikes, and where some of the finest products that fuel Turkiye’s national tea obsession are grown. Greek monasteries and ancient port towns litter the Black Sea littoral.
Whatever way you want to travel Eastern Turkey’s Silk Road, let’s talk about it.
Classic Uzbekistan
A Classic Uzbekistan Itinerary
Our classic Uzbekistan itinerary showcases much of what this country is rightly famous for. An intoxicating mixture of deserts, ancient walled citadels and spectacular Silk Road architecture that you'll remember forever.
Minarets and Madrassahs
Uzbekistan has featured on many recent ‘Where to Visit now’ lists – and for good reason. This beguiling land at the heart of the ancient Silk Road is a nation of sumptuous architecture, fascinating history, dazzling arts and welcoming people.
This thoughtfully designed luxury tour gives you the chance to not only be dazzled by some of the most famous sights of the Silk Road, but also get under the skin of this intriguing post-Soviet nation – to eat with local families, meet artists, learn how to cook the national dish and hear expert tales of Timur, Genghis Khan, the Great Game and more.
Embark on your own Silk Road Adventure
This bespoke Uzbekistan tour takes full advantage of our intimate knowledge of this fascinating country; those who join us will enjoy a a truly personal experience. Get in touch to start designing your tailor-made Classic Uzbekistan trip.
