how a starting figure is built and why it changes
Reserve a vacation package at a written per person figure, and see what moves it
Every figure on this site is a starting figure, per person, two people sharing a room. It becomes a real number only when it is priced against your dates and sent to you in writing.
$1,500
A price on a travel website is a promise about something that has not happened yet. Here you reserve a vacation package at a written per person figure, and every figure is built the same way, from the trip as it stands on its own page.
A price on a travel website is a promise about a thing that has not happened yet. Ours are built the same way every time. We take the trip as it is written on its page, we assume two adults sharing one room, we take the least expensive season in which that trip is worth doing at all, and we work out what the operating company would charge for it. That number goes on the page with the word "from" in front of it, and it is honest about exactly one situation: two people, low season, no add ons, booked far enough ahead that nothing is scarce. Change any one of those and the number changes. We would rather explain that here than let you discover it in an email.
This office takes no money from you at any point. You never give us a card number, nothing here checks out, and not one box anywhere on the site will take payment details. When you accept a written figure, the company that runs the trip sends the bill to you directly, on its own terms and its own terms, and it pays us a commission some weeks after you are home. That arrangement is worth stating on the pricing page in particular, because it explains why we have no reason to talk you into a more expensive week: the difference in what we earn between a $1,900 trip and a $2,400 one is small enough that it has never once decided anything here. What decides things is whether you come back and ask us again.
what moves a figure
The single biggest lever, and on some trips it is worth more than everything else on this list combined. The same week of walking can differ by 60 percent between April and August.
Every figure assumes two sharing. One person alone pays a supplement, explained further down. Three or four in a room usually drops the per person figure, sometimes sharply.
Small operators price by how much of their season is already sold. Nine months out you are buying from a full calendar. Six weeks out you are buying whatever is left.
Adding two nights rarely adds two nights of cost. The expensive parts are the arrival, the transfers and the guide's time, and those are already paid for.
Whether a place is reached by scheduled bus, by a shared van, or by a car that exists only for you. This is where two superficially identical trips separate.
Family run guest houses, small hotels and one or two properties that cost real money. The trip does not change. The figure moves by a few hundred dollars per person.
A departure that runs with six people carries costs that a departure of fourteen splits fourteen ways. Small numbers are better to travel in and cost more to travel in.
Half board across a week is a different figure from breakfast only, and on a walking route with nowhere to eat at lunchtime it is not optional.
Operators reprice, usually once or twice a year. A figure quoted to you in writing holds to the terms in that email. A figure on a page does not.
Reserve against a figure you can read twice
Two headings appear on every trip page in this catalogue, in the same place, in the same order. They are called inside the figure and outside it, and they are not marketing sections. They are a list.
Inside the figure names what the operating company has committed to provide for the number shown: the nights and where they are, the meals and which ones, the guiding and how many days of it, the transport between points on the route, entry to anything the route goes inside, and the luggage transfer if the trip has one. If it appears under that heading, it is bought.
Outside it names what you will additionally pay for, and we write that list longer than most people would. Flights are outside it on every trip here, without exception, because we do not sell air travel and will not pretend to have priced it. So are lunches when they are not included, drinks, tips to local guides and drivers, anything you choose to add on a free day, and the single supplement where one applies. The point of writing that list at full length is that the number underneath it means something. A short "outside it" list is usually a sign that somebody has moved the awkward items somewhere less visible.
When a written figure comes back from us, both lists come with it, priced against your actual dates rather than the low season assumption. That is the version to compare against anything else you are looking at. The one on the page is a starting point for a conversation, and we have never pretended otherwise.
Traveling alone, and what the room costs you
Hotels sell rooms, not beds. A double room occupied by one person earns the property roughly half of what it earns occupied by two, so it charges a supplement to make up part of the gap. That supplement is the operating company's, not ours, and we add nothing to it. On the trips in this catalogue it runs from around $190 for a short walking week in a region with a lot of small guest houses, to over $900 on a trip built around two or three properties that are expensive to begin with. We will always tell you the figure before you commit to anything, and on the trips where it is large we will say so unprompted.
There are ways around it that are worth knowing. A few operators are willing to match you with a second unaccompanied traveler of the same gender if you ask, which removes the supplement entirely and comes with the obvious caveat that you do not know who you are getting. A few of our trips use guest houses with genuine single rooms, small ones, and those are priced properly rather than as a discounted double. And on trips with a fixed departure calendar, one or two dates a year are usually set aside with the supplement reduced or waived to fill the last spaces. We keep track of which ones and will tell you when you ask, which is a different thing from advertising it. If you are traveling alone and the room cost is the thing standing in the way, say so in your first message and we will start from there instead of finding out three emails later.
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What a written figure looks like and how to get one
This office keeps no counter hours and publishes none, because a printed opening time would be a promise about a person rather than about the work. What is promised instead is a deadline: every request that reaches the form is read in the order it arrived and answered within one business day, and if the answer needs longer than that you will get a note saying so and what it is waiting on.
Send us the trip, a rough window of dates, and how many of you there are. Requests are read in the order they arrive and answered within one business day. Costing a specific set of days and putting it in writing runs two to four working days, because it involves asking the operating company what those dates actually cost rather than guessing from a table. If the answer is going to be worse than the number on the page, we say that in the first line of the reply rather than the last.
We do not advise on visas, entry paperwork, passports, travel insurance or anything medical, and we will tell you plainly when a question belongs to someone qualified to answer it rather than attempting it ourselves. What happens if you change your mind afterward is set out at the cancellation terms, and the sequence from first message to confirmed reservation is at the order of operations. Questions that come up often enough to be worth writing down are answered at the page of hard questions.
Willow Mile Press is a booking office. Willow Mile Press Bookings LLC arranges reservations and places them with the company that operates the trip, which contracts with you directly and under its own conditions. We fly nobody, house nobody and carry nobody, and we are not a tour operator or an online booking site, and we are not affiliated with any of them.
Put a request in front of the desk
This form is open 24/7 and takes booking requests at any hour. It asks for no card number and no payment, because nothing is ever paid to this office. Requests are read in the order they arrive and answered within one business day.
No card number is asked for on this page or held anywhere by this office, and sending this costs nothing and commits you to nothing. A request is not a reservation: nothing is held in your name until the operating company confirms it in writing and you have read its terms.
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