Luxury Escorted Tours

"There's a time and a place for everything," the adage has it, and luxury escorted tours are a perfectly good case in point. Chances are fairly good--okay, so I may be going out on a limb here--that your second language is not Swahili, Vietnamese, or Hindi. If I'm right, then travelling to that part of the world with only English under your belt is, hmm, not necessarily ideal.

Luxury Escorted Tours: Place and Time

I say this because I tried it once when traveling off the beaten track in southern China, several hours west of Shanghai and Wuxi. The going got a little tricky for a while there. With luxury escorted tours you're accompanied by a personable and region-expert guide who's also at least bilingual. It comes in handy, to say the least. Chances are also good that this excursion is a once-in-a-lifetime jaunt, not an expedition, not a routine trip. It should be memorable not because of the headaches involved, but because of the apparent easy balanced tempo.

It doesn't matter whether you're exploring the ruins of Buddhist temples along the road to Mandalay, or Shinto shrines and monastery gardens near Kyoto. The idea is to enjoy yourself every step of the way, never wondering to yourself, "are we there yet?" Your answer is not a canned "luxury" trip that merits the adjective because of a first-class airplane seat across the ocean.

It is instead the comfort and security of luxury escorted tours. All-inclusive touring is what you're after. That means that more than just the basics are covered in your tour package price--general touring expenses, five-star quality accommodations, meals, tipping, entrance fees, and transport costs. Last but not least, you're accompanied by an expert and professional travel guide.