This Top-Rated Adventure Travel Company is Ready to Rock Your World in 2021
Tizi n’ Test, a scenic high road, stretches through the mountains between Taroudant and Marrakesh in Morocco. A visit to the country’s High Atlas Mountains is among the may offerings on tap at Mountain Travel Sobek (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Did 2020 sideline your travel dreams? Are you ready to get back out there and have the adventure of a lifetime (once the industry truly opens back up again and it’s safe to do so)? Do you like opening paragraphs with multiple rhetorical questions?
Okay, that last one’s not so important, but if you’ve been sitting on your hands and knees since March, just itching to get out there and explore the great unknown once more: pay attention, because one of the world’s most highly-rated adventure travel companies has a full slate of trips just waiting for your travel-bitten butt to salivate over in the coming year.
Mountain Travel Sobek is widely recognized as one of the best in the adventure travel business, having just this year been crowned the Best Adventure Travel Company by USA Today. The company, which has been around since 1969, is also a preferred travel partner of both The New York Times Journeys and Smithsonian Journeys, two highly-respected travel communities.
Over the last five decades, Mt. Sobek has guided hundreds of expeditions around the globe, offering adventure-seeking travelers once-in-a-lifetime trips that are “designed to inspire and exhilarate, enliven and excite,” with the ultimate goal of “opening eyes and minds through profoundly personal connections with nature and culture.”
So how do they do it? The company primarily offers small group and custom adventures through guides that lead trips geared toward specific interests/types of travelers. Those areas include cruising, cultural trips, family adventures, hiking and trekking, rafting and kayaking, and wildlife and safari. Trips in each category are offered on all seven continents, and all trips are tagged with an activity level, ranging from 1 (relaxed) to 5 (this bad boy is so demanding you’re going to need a note from your doctor certifying your body’s up for it), so you know what you’re getting into.
With all of that as an introduction, let’s take a look at some of Mt. Sobek’s featured offerings for 2021, starting with a destination that also finds itself on Condé Nast Traveler’s list of the “21 Best Places to Go in 2021”: Angola. Mt. Sobek’s Angola Expedition, scheduled for June 17-25, will be a history-making trip, with company cofounder Richard Bangs set to lead a group of six to eight people into Okavango Delta in what will be Mt. Sobek’s first-ever Angolan safari.
Gorillas like this one await visitors in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park (Photo: Leila Boujnane)
If you read all that and thought, “Hmm, that sounds like it could be pricey” — you’re absolutely right! The 9-day trip costs a whopping $19,995 per person, *not including international airfare to the meeting point in Maun, Botswana.
On the fairly safe assumption that you don’t make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, let’s look at some options that are a little more wallet-friendly. One option would be the Uganda Gorilla Safari, which Mt. Sobek offers a handful of times throughout the year. At $7,495 per person, the 11-day trek begins in Entebbe and takes travelers on a journey through a number of the country’s national parks, including Kibale and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The next trip is slated for July 3-12.
Spending that kind of money on a trip — even a big one — is probably still out of range for many, but not to fret: there are still cheaper options out there. A private adventure into Alaska’s North Country, for one, comes in at $6,750 per person, while a cultural trek across Turkey runs $4,995 per person and a Costa Rican whitewater rafting adventure checks in at $3,995 per person.
The absolute cheapest trip, at least among Mt. Sobek’s featured itineraries, is a week-long rafting expedition along the Salmon River in Idaho. Aside from spending time on the river in the floating vessel of your choice, the trip also includes visits to natural hot springs ancient rock formations, and refreshing waterfalls, along with hiking and fishing. And all of this can be yours for the low-low price of $2,695 per person.
If none of the above catches your eye, first I have to ask: what’s wrong with you? Second, that’s okay, because Mt. Sobek has plenty more on offer over on their website. Go ahead and take a peek, and as always, safe travels.
-LTH