Under 30s holidays guide

Move aside Ayia Napa and Sunny Beach; this under 30s travel guide proves that you don’t have to follow the college crowd to the Med or Mexico during your valuable holiday time. You could tour the monasteries of Georgia and Armenia, camp under the midnight sun in Iceland, traverse Mongolia by train, or glide down the Nile at sunset. That’s not to say you won’t get to sup the delights of your host country. European tours wouldn’t be complete without showing you just how Berlin’s craft beer boom came to be or how to sip vodka the Russian way (straight up, of course).

We joke. These small group holidays are fun with morals on, designed for a bunch of socially and environmentally conscious travellers. Join a low impact, small group tour, and your guide will take booking sleeper trains and home stays out of your hands, and fill you in on exactly which ruin bars to make a beeline for (or avoid) in Budapest. Read our under 30s holidays guide to find out more.

These aren’t your average under 30s holidays. You won’t scrape through Rome in a 50-seater coach or see more bars than baroque. They’re not your average backpacker trips, either, which often circle an over-stomped route at the expense of locals.

You’ll probably join a small group of up to 16 travellers matched up with local drivers, guides and transport. Some of the more complicated European rail trips can be tailor made – ideal if you want to sneak in a detour or pick and choose your accommodation.

You’ll join a group who is on your wave length. People who won’t be averse to exploring the night markets till the early hours or hopping around the ruin bars of Budapest.

These under 30s holidays are for people who care about where their money goes. These holidays get you planting trees in Iceland to combat erosion and meeting the people behind the headlines in Israel and Palestine.

When it does come to budget, many of the trips will surprise you. Lots of free time and optional activities make an epic trip suddenly affordable – especially in shoestring standards like Cambodia, where a bowl of Khmer curry is just a couple of pounds.

Solo travellers are in the majority on these tours. That's because small group travel is especially appealing for independent first-time travellers who'd like the extra security and a readymade group of friends to travel with.

Timings and themes vary hugely. Some tours take a week to zoom in on a region of Southeast Asia, while others spend a month tackling the Silk Road by train. They tend to be whistle stop tours, too – train-tripping around Eastern Europe, for instance, or backpacking around Thailand and Laos. All the logistics are sorted for you by experts who will hunt out the best home stays and pair you up with the best tour guides in town.