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Steppes Travel Tailor made holidays and expert-led small group adventures, designed to help you See the World Better. Over 30 years of expertise.

Voted a Conde Nast Specialist Tour Operator in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Discover Extraordinary with Steppes Travel. For over 30 years, our team of knowledgeable and industry recognised travel specialists has been sending the curious, the inquisitive and the intrepid on tailor-made and expert-led group trips to over 100 countries in innovative and sustainable ways, creating Beautiful Adventures and remarkable travel experiences for couples, families, private parties and solo travellers. A registered B Corp, Steppes Travel was recognised in 2023 by Conde Nast Traveller Magazine as one of the Top 5 Specialist Tour Operators in the world.

Rhinos are back in Matusadona.After disappearing from this part of northern Zimbabwe, 17 rhinos have now been reintroduc...
08/10/2026

Rhinos are back in Matusadona.

After disappearing from this part of northern Zimbabwe, 17 rhinos have now been reintroduced to Matusadona National Park, marking an important new chapter for a landscape that has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years.

We were delighted to help Lisa Grainger experience that story first-hand for The Times, travelling through Zimbabwe with Steppes Travel to see what the return of the rhino means for the park, its wildlife and the communities around it.

Her journey took her from Mana Pools to Lake Kariba and Matusadona, before continuing to Victoria Falls, revealing a Zimbabwe where conservation is helping wildlife and opportunity return together.

Read the full piece in The Times.

https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/africa-travel/zimbabwe-rhinos-matusadona-national-park-qhrxnxsjh

And, if you’d like to follow in Lisa’s footsteps, we have a brand new itinerary suggestion on our website:

https://www.steppestravel.com/holiday-ideas/zimbabwe-the-return-of-the-rhino/

06/10/2026

Tiger conservation has changed dramatically within a generation. Julian Matthews has seen that change from the inside.

Having worked at the coal face with authorities and conservationists in India, Julian has witnessed both the pressures facing tigers and the extraordinary work behind their recovery.

Next year, he’ll lead our Kings of Tiger Conservation tour, taking travellers beyond the sightings to understand the story behind them: the people, decisions and conservation efforts that have helped bring tigers back from the brink in parts of India.

For anyone who wants to see tigers in the wild and understand how close we came to losing them, this is the story behind the stripes.

If we’ve helped you see the world differently, we’d love your vote.You can vote for Steppes Travel in the Best Luxury To...
05/10/2026

If we’ve helped you see the world differently, we’d love your vote.

You can vote for Steppes Travel in the Best Luxury Tour Operator category of The Times and Sunday Times Travel Awards 2026.

For us, the best journeys are about more than where you go. They’re shaped by the people you meet, the knowledge shared along the way and the moments that change how you see a place.

If you’ve travelled with Steppes, spoken to one of our specialists or simply followed our journeys from afar, we’d be very grateful for your support.

Voting closes on 18 October. Vote here:
https://times.formstack.com/forms/times_travel_awards_2026

The Celebrity Traitors is back tonight, so we thought we’d help sharpen your skills at spotting a Traitor.Specifically, ...
01/10/2026

The Celebrity Traitors is back tonight, so we thought we’d help sharpen your skills at spotting a Traitor.

Specifically, the ones hiding in your travel plans.

We’ve rounded up the travel Traitors we’d banish from the table.

Swipe to see if any have made it into your plans.

Some experts study a region. Sylvie Franquet made it part of her life.After studying Arabic and Islamic history, Sylvie ...
30/09/2026

Some experts study a region. Sylvie Franquet made it part of her life.

After studying Arabic and Islamic history, Sylvie moved to Cairo to continue her studies. She fell in love with the city and stayed for years, working as a teacher, guide and tour company manager before going on to travel extensively across the Middle East.

In April 2027, she’ll bring that knowledge and personal connection to Southern Iraq, leading a 12-day journey from Basra to Baghdad through a country whose story stretches back to the beginnings of civilisation.

Travel through the Mesopotamian Marshes, walk among the ancient cities of Ur and Uruk, experience the sacred centres of Najaf and Karbala, and explore Babylon before reaching Baghdad. Along the way, Sylvie will bring history, art and modern Iraq into conversation with one another.

Because a place this layered deserves to be explored with someone who has spent a lifetime looking beyond the obvious.

Find out more via the link below: https://www.steppestravel.com/group-tours/southern-iraq-with-sylvie-franquet/

29/09/2026

You might remember that earlier this year we won the Most OutThere Initiative in Community, Conservation and Sustainability at the OutThere Experientialist Awards.

What we haven’t shared yet is where the prize money went.

We put it back into the Steppes Fund for Female Guides, helping support a recent female nature guide training programme in India, delivered with our partner on the ground, Encounters Asia.

The programme gives women greater access to professional training, qualifications and career development within wildlife tourism and conservation. Over the past three years, we have supported the training of 115 female wildlife guides from Bandhavgarh, Pench, Kanha and Satpura.

A skilled guide can completely change the way a forest is understood. They read alarm calls, tracks and behaviour, while revealing the smaller details that might otherwise pass unseen.

For the women taking part, that knowledge can open the door to confidence, income and a long-term career in guiding.

So while we were proud to win the award, we’re even prouder of where the winnings went.

We’re delighted that the Steppes Travel Fund for Female Guides has been recognised on the 2026 Bright Ideas in Travel li...
28/09/2026

We’re delighted that the Steppes Travel Fund for Female Guides has been recognised on the 2026 Bright Ideas in Travel list.

The list celebrates the people and projects approaching some of travel’s most pressing challenges with fresh thinking, and we’re incredibly proud to see the Fund among them.

For us, this recognition is about something much bigger. It’s about creating greater opportunity for women in guiding and making space for more perspectives, experiences and voices to shape the way we encounter a place.

Because changing who gets to tell the story of a place can change how we see it.

A very happy moment for everyone involved, and more motivation to keep pushing for meaningful change in travel.

Dispatches from the Field is back with our seventh edition: What’s Good Today? This month, we reflect on what we lose wh...
25/09/2026

Dispatches from the Field is back with our seventh edition: What’s Good Today? This month, we reflect on what we lose when food becomes too convenient, and why markets still offer one of the most immediate ways to understand a place.

Inside, Sue Grimwood looks to Bear Island, a remote outpost in the Barents Sea where wind, sea and the Arctic itself decide whether you get to go ashore. Paul Bird takes us to Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests, where a tiny wild cat, long known to local communities as the tilcayo, has only recently been recognised by science.

In Mexico, John Faithfull explores the value of sitting down with an expert before visiting the country’s great archaeological sites, so the ruins begin to feel part of a larger human story.

This month’s bulletins take us from citizen science in the Galapagos to the return of cheetahs in Zambia’s Greater Luangwa Ecosystem and private archive access in Phnom Penh, before three reads filed by our specialists explore Malawi’s overlooked safari cast, Peshawar beneath its reputation and Uzbekistan beyond the familiar Silk Road shorthand.

Read the latest edition and subscribe here: https://steppestravel.substack.com/p/whats-good-today

23/09/2026

Three jaguars. One riverbank.

Paul Goldstein is currently leading our Pantanal Safari in Brazil, where days on the water are bringing the group into the territory of one of South America’s most formidable predators.

Sightings like this can never be planned. That unpredictability is part of what makes them so compelling.

Paul Goldstein

October is getting closer, and so are two evenings with one of the most compelling storytellers we know.This autumn, Rob...
18/09/2026

October is getting closer, and so are two evenings with one of the most compelling storytellers we know.

This autumn, Rob Caskie returns for two special Steppes events, one in London and one in Gloucestershire, bringing the stories of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift vividly to life.

Each evening will also feature a live performance chosen to deepen the atmosphere of the story, followed by a w**e reception and the chance to continue the conversation.

Places are limited, particularly for our Gloucestershire event.

Find out more and book via the links below:
London - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1993901816006
Gloucestershire - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1993903661526

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Steppes Travel, 51 Castle Street
Cirencester
GL71QD

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9am - 5:30pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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