Six lines, thirteen segments, no flights arranged
Six overland lines in thirteen pieces: reserve a vacation package with a Washington DC travel agent
A reservations office in Washington that sells overland travel in pieces. Six long lines run through this catalogue, each cut into named segments; a segment is a real purchase with its own figure and its own nights, and a whole line is simply all of its segments. Figures run from $980 to $5,580 per person with two of you sharing.
Reserve this with the officeNothing is charged here. The form stays open at any hour and a person writes back inside one working day.
What is actually for sale here
Thirteen segments and six lines. A segment is five or six nights in one place with the ground arrangements made, and you can buy exactly one of them. A line is the whole run, two or three segments joined end to end, and it costs precisely what those segments cost added together. This office takes nothing off for the chain and adds nothing for a single piece, so there is no version of this catalogue in which the arithmetic rewards you for buying more. That is unusual enough to say plainly rather than leave you to work out.
Why everything is on the ground
No line in this catalogue depends on a flight or a ship being available, because this office arranges neither and holds a contract with no carrier. Getting to the country is your own booking, made whenever and however you like; the arrangements here begin once you are standing in the first place on the list. The practical effect is that a change to your inbound travel does not unravel what has been reserved, and that nobody here is quoting you a fare over which they have no control.
How far apart the pieces sit
Every segment carries a mark showing how long the journey into it takes: under two hours, half a day, a full day, or a night in transit. The mark is a square inside a fixed field, and the more it draws back from the edges the longer the move. People underestimate this part more than any other, and a line that reads as four hundred kilometres on a map can be a full day of switchbacks. Naming it up front is more use than describing the scenery.
One office, and what it is not
Northbound Notes is a reservations office and nothing else: it does not publish anything, it has nothing to do with money markets, and it moves no cargo. It places reservations with the company that runs each segment on the ground. That company bills you directly, in its own name, once you have agreed to the arrangement, and pays this office afterwards. No figure is charged at this end and no card number is asked for or kept.
Sea of Japan coast
Kanazawa to the Shonai plain, 16 nights end to end, $5,580 per person for all 3.
Kanazawa and the Kaga springs
under two hours6 nightsfrom $1,980a castle town of preserved teahouse districts and the hot spring villages inland from it
The Noto peninsula
half a day5 nightsfrom $1,740a rural peninsula of salt pans, lacquer workshops and terraced rice above the sea
Dewa Sanzan and the Shonai plain
a night in transit5 nightsfrom $1,860three pilgrimage mountains, a cedar stairway of two thousand steps and the rice plain below
Pontic valleys to Kars
Rize to the Ani plateau, 11 nights end to end, $3,110 per person for all 2.
The Pontic valleys above Rize
half a day5 nightsfrom $1,420tea terraces, wooden mountain hamlets and cloud that sits in the valleys until noon
Kars and the Ani plateau
a night in transit6 nightsfrom $1,690a treeless high plateau, a Russian-planned town and a ruined medieval capital on a gorge edge
Middle Atlas descent
The cedar plateau to the Ziz gorges, 10 nights end to end, $2,520 per person for all 2.
The cedar plateau above Ifrane
under two hours5 nightsfrom $1,180old growth Atlas cedar, upland lakes and a plateau that holds snow into April
The Ziz gorges down to Midelt
a full day5 nightsfrom $1,340a river cutting south through red rock, with a string of walled villages along it
Deccan stone route
Hampi to Pattadakal, 10 nights end to end, $2,350 per person for all 2.
Hampi and the Tungabhadra
a full day5 nightsfrom $1,260a granite boulder landscape holding the remains of a very large medieval city
Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal
under two hours5 nightsfrom $1,090cave temples cut into a red sandstone gorge and the villages where the form was worked out
Southern Ecuadorean sierra
Cuenca to Podocarpus, 11 nights end to end, $3,330 per person for all 2.
Cuenca and the Cajas paramo
half a day6 nightsfrom $1,620a colonial grid at two and a half thousand metres and a lake filled moorland above it
The Loja highlands and Podocarpus
a full day5 nightsfrom $1,710cloud forest on the eastern slope where the Andes drop toward the Amazon basin
Carpathian ridge
The Tatra foothills to the Slovak Karst, 10 nights end to end, $2,310 per person for all 2.
The Tatra foothills
under two hours5 nightsfrom $980timber villages, sheep pasture and a granite range that rises straight off the plain
The Slovak Karst and Spis
a night in transit5 nightsfrom $1,330a limestone plateau of caves and gorges under one of the largest castles in Europe
This office arranges neither seats nor sea crossings, so the button above does not reach it. The six entries go to a booking company met through a host that answers to a name lent by this domain, and everything that comes back is that company’s: its prices, live at the second they appear, its conditions, its ticket, and a card entered on its pages, there being no field here able to take one. If a purchase follows, that company keeps its own terms with this office, agreed long before anybody looked anything up, and taken from its end rather than added to yours. What the box hands over, and what it works out on this page.
Reserve one segment, or a whole line
This form is open at any hour, and whatever reaches it is read by a person who answers inside one working day. Nothing you send commits you, and no figure is charged at this end at any point.