Winter vacations

Finnish Lapland is an adventure playground for our winter multi activity vacations. We take you to remote parts of the region where you’ll be immersed in pristine nature while enjoying a host of thrilling experiences. Parts of Finnish Lapland have high levels of unemployment, and responsible winter tourism paying fair wages can create valuable jobs and training for guides, instructors and hotel staff. Under winter skies you’ll snowshoe forest trails, mush a team of huskies out into the wilderness, learn how to cut a hole in a frozen lake for fishing, and watch the skies for the Northern Lights from a comfortable aurora cabin. Our multi activity vacations in winter are also an opportunity to meet Sámi people and learn about their culture and ways of life, perhaps interspersing your activities with visits to Sámi museums in Jokkmokk or Inari.

Our ski touring and cross country skiing vacations offer a beautiful, tranquil winter vacation experience that’s more than just an alternative to crowded pistes, ski lift queues and heaving mountainside restaurants. Traveling in this way also has a negligible impact on the natural environment compared to downhill skiing in major resorts, which can come accompanied by piste bashing and snow cannons. Cross country ski vacations are often based in a single hotel for convenience, with many routes to explore in the surrounding area. Our winter retreat near Hohe Tauern National Park, at the foot of Austria’s highest mountain, promises cross country skiing every day, fuelled by delicious vegan cuisine that is locally sourced, organic and seasonal. Defrost every afternoon in the woodfired hot tub, with a slice of homemade cake waiting for you. In Norway’s Jotunheim National Park, meanwhile, you’re ski touring, staying in a different locally owned lodge each night. These are self guided trips – you ski the same trails as the locals use on a day-to-day basis, and other than private and cultivated land, you can go where you please.

Our snowshoeing vacations visit more remote areas away from the big ski resorts. You might explore trails in Villabassa – this entire region in Italy’s Dolomites runs on renewable energy, and our travelers stay in hotels powered by hydro and solar. Or admire bearded vultures in flight while snowshoeing in Ordesa y Perdido National Park, in the Spanish Pyrenees. And if the snow isn’t there, you just walk instead. Our winter walking vacations can take you to Morocco’s Atlas Mountains – warm up in the village hammam after a trek with a guide from the local Bedouin community. Or to Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park, where guides whip up hearty meals in mountain bothies, and show you how to identify different animals by their tracks in the snow.

Our winter family vacations have all the gear, and all the ideas. They provide the cold weather clothing you’ll need, so that you can pack light. These are multi generational vacations, so kids and grown-ups alike will love husky sledding rides, snowshoeing and tobogganing. You can make a week of it and really experience life in Finnish Lapland. On some trips we also offer downhill skiing, such as in Montenegro’s Durmitor National Park where there are resorts that don’t use snow cannon. Skiing can be combined with fun snowshoeing, too. And in Slovakia’s High Tatras our family getaways offer similar experiences to Lapland, as well as the promise of thermal pools to warm up in.

Our winter tours are typically designed for small groups interested in beautiful snowy scenery, traditional festivities and an entirely different experience to what you’d find in a bustling ski resort. Meet Tsaatan reindeer herders, enjoy sleigh rides over frozen lakes, and watch ice sculpting and tug-of-war competitions in northern Mongolia’s Khovsgol Nuur National Park. Our trips stay in family-run homestays, eschewing more touristy ger camps so that you’ll bathe as the locals do, in the communal shower houses of nearby towns.

Other culture-filled winter tours explore the picturesque Baltic states, or track the spectacular Northern Lights in Iceland. Getting more remote, you can take a winter photography tour in Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Guides scout out prime locations, while photo sessions are interspersed with insights into Lofoten history, culture and folklore. Our vacations support small local businesses in areas that don’t see much tourism, whether that’s purchasing seafood from small-scale fishing enterprises, or helping you to find the islands’ handmade artisan knitwear.

Winter is a wonderful time for wildlife watching. Many animals fight for survival in the colder months, hasten to scavenge enough food to last them ‘til spring, or take advantage of snowy conditions and thinner vegetation in the hunt for prey. Led by expert local guides who know the best locations for sightings, and keep you safe in often challenging terrain, they seek out everything from polar bears in Canada to wolves in the French Alps, and snow leopards in Ladakh, as the elusive big cats come down to lower elevations in search of food.