Adventurous family holidays off the beaten track

[Cornwallian]

Do people have recommendations for adventure holidays off the beaten track (or as off as you can get nowadays within a two week holiday!).

Holidays we have loved of this type include:

• travelling the length of Vietnam, using sleeper trains and local transport, spending time on boats through the Mekong delta, cycling through villages and generally getting a real feel for the place
• trekking in the Atlas Mountains
• Northern Norway in mid winter doing cross country skiing and searching for the northern lights, ice fishing etc

The kids are older now so we could be more adventurous but need ideas.

Correct. Staying out made a massive difference Grande cache fro example this summer staying where we stayed is only £25 a room a night through booking dot com tonight.

inn ok the rookies was a flat as was whistler.

Vancouver was also cheap as stayed out a little. Perfect for us. We had a car the whole time.

we had a mixture of eating in and out.

we also did the Olympic bobsleigh run.

whale watching was the most expensive thing. The cable car was like £15-20 quid as was first one of the day so was an offer. Jet leg helps with these things.

Bear watching was only the cable car cost.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.wildblueyonder.ca/grande-cache-rafting/www.wildblueyonder.ca/grande-cache-rafting" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.wildblueyonder.ca/grande-cache-rafting/www.wildblueyonder.ca/grande-cache-rafting/ - this is who we used. We booked it locally when we where there.

Flights where £2226
grande cache was CAD133 a night for 2 rooms b&b.

just rooting back through the emails.

http://www.seabreezeadventures.ca/

CAD600 it cost us. Took me a while to find it. Currently on a ship wifi.

fuel wasn’t much we had a Ford focus hire car so was doing good mpg.

Just killing time before dinner.

another holiday I’d recommend though this one is full board and will have cost us nearly 4k for both of us 11 night cruise in the Norwegian fjords. + 2 nights in hotels enroute.

We've done Vic Falls to Windhoek in a 4x4 with roof tents.

We went to Japan - apart from the very on-the-beaten track cities, lots of the holiday was very OTBT - we hiked up a holy mountain and stayed at a Buddhist monastery on top and attended a fire festival, we hiked the Samurai trail and stopped off at medieval tea houses, and passed rice fields and water wheels like something out of a studio Ghibli movie. It was beautiful.

You could go to Jordan - ride camels, sleep in the desert, hike to Petra which is phenomenal, go for a trad hammam bath, swim in the river Jordan, float in the Dead Sea, visit some famous biblical sites like the cell on top of the mountain where the devil allegedly tempted Jesus, or the mountain where Moses saw the promised land etc.

Or similar adventure in Tunisia - far away form the tourist beach resorts - three day camel trek and camping in the desert, incredible souks, dried up salt lakes, stay in the underground cave houses where Star Wars was filmed - or similar ones. Explore and Exodus do this sort of trip in both Jordan and Tunisia and they are very good value for what they are. Perfect tween/teen adventures.

central America ( we did diy) amazing Mexico belize guatamala. Flying in and out of Cancun. recently did the basic kenya safari with Intrepid and bolted on an air b n b in Watamu. All great ! want to do sri lanka and Jordan.

We’ve just come back Uzbekistan (with a 5 year old) and would suggest Central Asia/Silk Road. We will definitely be going back to do more in the region, potentially Mongolia with horse riding. Uzbekistan felt adventurous and off the beaten track still but you can see tourism is expanding rapidly and I would assume the rest of Central Asia will go the same way in the next decade.

Where did you go/stay in Ghana please?

I’m seriously considering Central Asia. Can you tell me any highlights or lessons from your Uzbek holiday?

We flew to Accra with Air France via Paris as from up north.

we stayed at the mahogany lodge

then went onto PramPram for a couple of days.

we then stayed in a lccal village for a few nights where our DD was teaching. Got to really see local life.

from there we stayed at what is my favourite hotel we ever stayed - the meet me there lodge on the Keta lagoon. Saw turtles being born, did a drumming workshop and a boat cruise also visited some local historical places. We then got a car via Accra to the cape coast - very disappointing hotel and the most expensive we did all trip. There we did th e castles and hand fed crocodiles. Visited the rain forest and the treetop walk. Our driver had sorted us a personal guide through the rainforest part.

then we finished with a few more nights in Ghana staying again at the mahogany lodge another simple hotel we loved.

we only had a car for the trip from Keta to the cape coast and kind of regretted it. Everywhere else we had found a local guide our DD had used.

would love to see more of Ghana especially the north area. Such a beautiful country and fantastic people so welcoming.

The mahgony lodge was just on the edge of Accra. We hadn’t planned on staying there the second time but it was so good and convenient.

we did book most things on the fly and used some of the local buses “Trotro” and very locally the motos so cheap.

We only had 9 days so flew directly from London into Tashkent and then used the fast trains to travel to Samarkand and then Buhkara. If we had more time we would have visited Khiva, the mountains and maybe gone trekking/stayed in some of the camps.

The trains are great and we really enjoyed using them, also very cheap when you’re there. I booked some guides for less then $100 a day and felt we really got our monies worth. Their local version of Uber (yandex go) is also fantastic, it felt very luxurious to be taxiing around the city (about $1.50 for a 15 min ride).

Tashkent is extremely modern and luxurious in parts which juxtaposes massively with the ancient Silk Road cities. All round an interesting country!

We’re planning on wither Kazakhstan or Mongolia for another trip next year.

Another vote for Namibia. I'd suggest Nepal too, if you hadn't just done India.

MoodEnhancer · Yesterday 10:14

One of my favourite holidays was 2 weeks in Madagascar. We did a few days travelling down the main river in a dug out canoe sleeping in tents on the sandbanks, climbing the tsingy rock formations, went to see the avenue of the baobabs, and we saw orangutans in the wild. We also did a bit of a beach holiday on an island off the coast at the end too, which was one of the best beaches I have ever been to (Isle St Marie).

You saw orangutans in Madgascar. Were they holidaying with the penguins?

Sorry, I meant lemurs!