Fall Series of Slide Presentations

As we approach the end of September many of us are welcoming the cooler weather and starting to think about our travel plans for the next year.

With this in mind I'd like to take the opportunity to remind those of you in Ottawa that our free Fall Slide Shows start this Thursday evening with a wonderful armchair journey through China, Mongolia and Russia on one of the world's great railways.

Join us as our friend Alex Bissett takes us from Beijing, beyond the Great Wall, across the fringes of the Gobi Desert, through Mongolia and onward to Moscow and St. Petersburg aboard the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian railways.

As always, space is at a premium in our office, so please call ahead (789-1900) to reserve your free seats.

Over the next four weeks we'll be taking you through Central Asia, Kenya & Tanzania, the fabulous Arctic & Antarctic regions and Egypt and the Middle East.

As well, for those of you planning on coming with us in February and April on one of our Private Journeys or for those of you still considering it, we'll offer two special evenings of repeat presentations on Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Galapagos Islands and the Ecuadorian mainland.

For the schedule and description of our entire slide presentation program call us.

Early Booking Bonus Expires Friday

The other item I wanted to remind you about is that the early booking bonus for next summer's European River Cruise through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic ends this Friday so it's your last chance to save about US$240 per couple. Call us for details on this magnificent journey.

TrailFinders Builds New School in Laos

Many of you are already aware that we at TrailFinders support the people of the village of Houeisend Kham near the larger and more prosperous village of Pakbeng on the Mae Khong in Northern Laos.

For many political and economic reasons the government of the Lao PDR ignores the needs of the people who live in these types of small tribal villages along the river and consequently, without external financial assistance the children would have no opportunity to get even a rudimentary education.

The pictures in this month's newsletter were taken recently in the village and show not only some of the beautiful and gentle inhabitants but also show the results of two construction projects to expand the existing school and to construct an additional school building. TrailFinders is proud to be a part of these worthwhile ventures. Click on any of these pictures to see the larger size.

This year, those of you coming with us to this incredibly beautiful part of Indochina will have the opportunity to visit the village of Houeisend Kham with us to meet the people and to see first-hand what our contributions have done for the children of this neglected tribe.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for helping us to help these people. Whenever you book any travel products with TrailFinders, a small part of your payment goes toward helping the people in this village.

Gearing Up for the Winter and Spring Journeys

Once our slide shows end in late October, Daxa and I pack our bags and head out to New Delhi as we accompany some of you through Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttaranchal - fascinating parts of Northern India.

When we return near the end of November, Miral will be putting the finishing touches on her arrangements for accompanying the groups heading for Southeast Asia in the New Year.

While this is going on, Lenore completes final arrangements for her Private Journey through South Africa and returns just in time to leave again for South America.

In the middle of all this activity I'll be completing the development activities for our newest destinations and by January we plan to introduce our full program for Winter 2007 which will include some of the world's finest first-class private journeys in some magnificent places. We are currently considering Burma, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and the Arctic or Antarctic regions including perhaps Svalbard. If you are interested in any of these destinations please let us know.

You may well wonder how we do all this and still handle the regular stream of requests for our huge selection of new walking and cycling trips and cultural small-group journeys in hundreds of countries around the world, our expedition cruises and of course a pile of work connected with your requests for custom-designed journeys all over the world.

Juggling all this work and keeping things from falling on the floor takes an incredibly dedicated and loyal group of travel professionals and I wanted to take this opportunity to personally thank Miral, Lenore, Daxa, Janet and Jess for their ongoing support, their client-focus and their incredible dedication and hard work. One is truly in "good hands" when working with these people.

By the way, if you haven't met Janet - yes, she's new to us but certainly not new to the travel industry and I urge our readers to take a quick look at her bio in the "staff" section of our website here. Or better yet, drop in and meet her!

Thanks for taking the time to read our newsletter. We sincerely appreciate your interest.

Rick