Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Morocco or Bosnia: reserve a place at $2,410 per person

The $2,410 rung, and the three or four departures standing on it

Everything below is priced at $2,410 a head with two of you sharing a room. They are set out in no order of merit, because there is none to give.

Set the four beside each other

Put them in a line and they refuse to resolve into a set. Ha Giang is eleven nights of karst standing on end in northern Vietnam, with market days that move around the week. Sri Lanka is twelve nights in cool uplands, tea slopes and a railway that takes all day to cover very little ground. The Anti Atlas is nine nights of saffron terraces, painted rock and villages built into the slope. It runs October to April, when the north of the country is wet. Sarajevo and the Neretva is eight nights: a river gorge, an Ottoman town, and a city sitting in a bowl of hills. Each is $2,410 per person, two sharing. The office does not tell people which of the four to take, and it keeps no favorite to steer callers toward. What we will do is answer specific questions. Heat in May, altitude, road hours per day, how much of each trip is walked.

Months, not preferences, decide most of this

These four barely overlap in the calendar, which settles more questions than any opinion could. The Anti Atlas runs October to April; in summer the ground is too hot to walk on. Sri Lanka splits into two windows, January to March and July to September, because the island takes two monsoons on opposite coasts. Ha Giang runs September to November and again March to May. Sarajevo and the Neretva runs May and June, then September and October. Line your own free weeks up against those. Often only one or two trips remain, and that is the honest way to narrow a rung. Deposit shares differ too. Ten percent for Sri Lanka, twenty five for Vietnam and Bosnia, fifty for Morocco. The operating company sets that share and collects it directly, on terms it puts in writing. This office holds no money and takes no card details at any stage of a reservation.

Two things $2,410 leaves out

Flights are the first. The figure covers ground arrangements, rooms and the guiding described on each trip page, and nothing that happens in the air. From Florida all four mean a long flight and usually a connection, so ask us for realistic total travel time before you fix dates. The second is comfort. Rooms here are clean, small and often family run. Hot water can run to a schedule rather than all day, and in the Anti Atlas some nights are in village houses with shared washing arrangements. Air conditioning is not general. Nothing on this rung is a wildlife trip. The next rung is $2,875. It holds southern Armenia, the Kyrgyz summer pastures, the walk from Dana to Petra, and the Sine Saloum delta in Senegal. That is what the catalog contains at the next figure, stated so you know it is there. It is not a recommendation to spend more.