spiekermann travel tours

Spiekermann Travel

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Itinerary | Reiseplan

| 04.09.21 – 09.09.21 London | 26.09.21 – 11.10.21 Villefranche | 12.10.21 – 16.10.21 Cornuda | 18.10.21 Berlin | November London | December San Francisco

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Travel Notices

Preparing for your trip

Print this page and refer to it as you prepare for your trip!

Printed Sep 9, 2024 . Please visit https://staging.friendlyplanet.com/before-you-go/?tourId=1001 for the latest updates.

Documents & Entry Requirements

Entry requirements are provided for your convenience. However, unless otherwise stated, it is your responsibility to determine the requirements that apply to you and your trip and to comply with them, including obtaining any necessary visas or other travel documents by the required deadlines and carrying them with you. Especially with COVID-19, requirements are subject to change, so check back for the latest before you depart.

All US citizens must have a passport and a visa to enter Cuba. If you hold a passport from another country or you were born in Cuba

Cuba Entry Requirements

Advice from friendly planet.

Under current U.S. law, travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens and residents for tourism is prohibited. However, there are several forms of authorized travel, including  "Support for the Cuban People."  Travel to Cuba is regulated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

For U.S. passport holders, we will pre-arrange your travel visa, and the visa fee is included in your package price. Please note: each package includes one visa per person. Replacement visas are $75.

If you were born in Cuba, regardless of your citizenship, you must apply for a visa directly from the Cuban Embassy. Please notify us when you book if this applies to any travelers in your party.

You will receive your official Travel Certificate together with your visa, which you must complete and keep with your documents to comply with Support for the Cuban People travel.

Advice from our partner Sherpa

General requirements & guidelines.

• In general, you must have a passport to travel abroad, which should be valid for at least six months after your return date. Passports expiring before then should be renewed as soon as possible. Passports contain at least 2 blank pages for each country visited. If your passport does not have this many pages, obtain a new passport as soon as possible.
• if your passport and visa are not in order, airlines and cruise ships may deny boarding, countries may deny entry, and your trip may be disrupted. Travel insurance may not cover such losses.
• Any changes in names or passport information should be reported to us immediately. Airlines and cruise ships may deny boarding if the name on your passport does not match your tickets.
• Minors (age 17 or younger) departing and/or returning to the U.S. without parents or with only one parent may be required by U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) to present a notarized parental consent letter and/or unabridged birth certificate ( more information ). Many other countries have similar entry requirements, especially for minors traveling with a parent/guardian with a different surname; check with the consulates of all countries you'll be visiting to learn more.

Passport Copies

For this package, we are required to obtain copies of your passport(s). Please scan the photo and signature pages of each travelers' valid passport and email them to [email protected] . If you are unable to scan your passport(s), please make clear, legible color photocopies instead and mail to our office address . If you do not presently have a valid passport, send us a color copy of your most recent passport and let us know when your new one is expected. Then send us a copy of the new passport upon receipt.

Final Documents

Your final travel documents will be sent to you via email by 14 days prior to departure. These will include your daily itinerary, hotel and emergency contact information, and other relevant information. Please print your documents and take them with you. If you're departing in less than a week and haven't received your documents, let us know immediately!

Travel Insurance Documents

If you purchased travel insurance, please print and carry your policy documents, including contact information for emergency travel assistance and instructions on how to make a claim. If you purchased the travel protection plan we offer, we recommend you print the full policy.

Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP)

We encourage all U.S. citizens and nationals traveling abroad to enroll in the Department of State's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP). This free service allows you to receive important updates about safety and security issues in your destination, and makes it easier for the U.S. Embassy, as well as family & friends, to contact you in case of an emergency. To enroll or get more information, please visit the STEP website or any U.S. Embassy or Consulate.

Flights, Transfers & Arrival

Questions about your flights before you depart? Read the information below first. If you still have questions, contact our air specialists at 800-555-5765 ext. 2 or [email protected] .

Flights & Tickets

For this package, we generally book your flights and issue tickets after your final payment due date.

If you requested flights from another city, our air specialists will research the best options and send you a tentative flight schedule and quote for your approval within 5 business days of your booking (or approximately 330 days prior to travel, if you booked further out than that).

Once we have issued your tickets, we'll send you an "e-ticket receipt" which contains all of your flight information, including times, carriers, an airline booking reference number, and an e-ticket number. If you have not received this, or have questions about the flights we booked for you, please contact our air department. You will not receive paper tickets. We recommend you print and carry a copy of your flight details, including the airline booking reference number and e-ticket number, as some airports require this to enter the terminal. You do not need to reconfirm your flights with the airline prior to your departure, as we will handle this for you.

If you do not request specific seats: The airline typically assigns them within 24 hours of departure. If you do not like your assigned seats, you may be able to change them, subject to availability, when you check in online or at the counter. Learn more about Advance Seat Reservations .

You can enter special meal requests when you book with an agent or complete your online registration, shortly after booking. We will relay your requests to the airlines and our representatives abroad, but we cannot guarantee they will be honored. Please double check meal requests with your airline 72 hours before departure, and with our representatives upon arrival.

You may be able to earn frequent flyer points for your flights. Contact the airline directly once you receive your tickets to enter your frequent flyer number in your flight record, or enter it when you check in. As you travel, check your tickets or ask the check-in or gate agent prior to boarding each flight to ensure the number has been entered properly. And just to be safe, keep your boarding passes and passenger receipt as proof that you have actually flown the miles you want credited to your account.

Cabin upgrades may be available on your flights. Ask us about price and availability when you book online, in the special requests section, or contact our air department after you book. Please note that our special contracted airfare rates generally do not permit upgrading with frequent flyer points, and that upgrade requests may incur change fees if tickets have already been issued.

Flight Schedule

You will receive your flight schedule by email once we issue your tickets.

If you requested flights from another city, our air specialists will research the best options and send you a tentative flight schedule for your approval, and a confirmed schedule once we issue your tickets.

Airlines may change schedules at any time, even after flights have been confirmed, and we are not responsible for such changes. Please check for updates to your flight schedule prior to booking any connecting flights and again 72 hours prior to departure.

Connecting Flights

If you need to fly from (and/or return to) a different U.S. or Canadian city, we suggest you request those flights from us. If feasible, we will try to book all your flights together with a single carrier or a partner network on a single ticket. This ensures that your luggage will be transferred between flights for you, and more importantly, that if there are any schedule changes, flight cancellations, or delays that affect your trip, the airline(s) will adjust your flights to ensure you have sufficient time to make your connections and/or make alternate arrangements to get you to your destination. Besides offering the most peace of mind, this often yields lower fares than purchasing separate connecting flights.

If you plan to purchase connecting flights to your departure city, we strongly suggest waiting until after your final payment due date and after you receive the e-tickets for your international flights, to reduce the chances that that your departure might be cancelled or rescheduled or that your international flight times might change. Before purchasing connecting flights, verify the times for your international flights. Leave at least 3½ hours connecting time between flights, and if you're traveling within a few weeks of Daylight Savings Time changes (in March and November, when flight schedules may change even more dramatically), allow 5–5½ hours between flights. Nobody likes waiting around the airport, but missing your flight is far worse!

Airport Transfers

Airport transfers are not included with this package. In most cases, private transfers at the destination are available for an additional fee; please package page or contact us for for details. Or you may instead arrange your own ground transportation to the package start and end points.

Arrival Complications

We make every effort to ensure our tours run smoothly and trouble-free. We don't expect any problems, and nor should you. But when things don't go as planned, here's what to do:

• You miss your flights, or your flights are cancelled: Please call us immediately. If it's outside our normal business hours, leave a message in our emergency mailbox, with a phone number at which to reach you, and we'll get right back to you.

Packing & Luggage

Baggage allowance: Each passenger may bring one piece of checked-in luggage and one carry-on piece (maximum of 44 pounds total for both). Anything over 44 pounds will be subject to a $2.00 per pound overage fee.

If you are checking a second bag there will be a $20 fee plus an additional charge of $2.00 per pound for its total weight.

Your carry-on luggage should not exceed 22” x 14” x 9”. Your carry-on luggage must fit under your seat or in the overhead compartment. In addition to your carry-on, you may also have one personal item, such as a camera or purse.

Learn more about Baggage Allowances on your international flights. Note that our baggage allowances may be less than those for your international flights. If you exceed the baggage limits, you may be subject to excess baggage charges levied by the airlines and/or by Friendly Planet.

Regardless of the limits—we recommend a smaller size and weight for both your checked and carry-on bags. It's so much easier and faster for you to get around when you have fewer, lighter bags! For your carry-on, consider a soft-sided bag such as a duffel rather than a hard clamshell-type case, which may not fit as easily into overhead compartments or under your seat, especially on buses. For your protection, we suggest your checked luggage have a TSA-approved lock.

Luggage tags: For your safety, we are no longer mailing Friendly Planet luggage tags to you. We encourage you to use your own. Fill in the luggage tags with your name and contact information and attach to each bag, including carry-ons and camera cases, so that your luggage can be identified should it get misplaced during your trip.

What to pack: Check out our list of top 10 must-haves for international travel , as well as what not to pack . Pack smart: put your travel documents, medications, one change of clothing, and other essentials in your carry-on, in case your checked baggage is misplaced. And pack light, for your own comfort and convenience. For clothing, we suggest packing a variety of separates with climate and comfort in mind.

What not to pack: U.S. law forbids you to carry hazardous materials aboard aircraft in your checked or carry-on baggage or on your person, including explosives, compressed gases, flammable liquids & solids, loaded firearms, poisons, corrosives and radioactive materials. Common examples include paints, lighter fluid, fireworks, mace/tear gas and oxygen bottles. Restricted materials may vary by airline and destination. Some items, in quantities of no more than 70 ounces total, may be carried within baggage, including medicinal or toilet articles such as hairspray, perfume and certain medicines that are necessary during your journey. Please check with the airline and/or visit the FAA website prior to travel if you have any questions.

While on Tour

What to expect.

This fast-paced, escorted educational program includes a reasonable amount of walking or hiking and requires an average level of physical fitness.

Remember that you're a guest in someone else's homeland, and that you're traveling to experience their country and culture. Be sensitive to local customs and manners, as many things may be done differently than what you're used to. And while we have made every effort to secure modern and comfortable accommodations and transportation, please note that the standards in other countries may be different from those you are accustomed to at home. Overall, you will find a polite, positive, patient, and open-minded approach generally yields the best travel experience!

Eating & Drinking

The meals included with your package are listed in the itinerary . For all other meals, you're at liberty to dine where you like. Your hotels will have several dining choices, from coffee shops to specialty restaurants.

Please see above for special meal requests .

Special Needs & Requests

Please see above for special meal requests and seat requests . If you have any other special requests, including wheelchair or electric cart assistance, please mention your request when you book with an agent, or in the special requests section when you book online. We will do our best to accommodate them!

Country FAQs

Cuba fast facts, notes & fine print.

Your round trip flights between Miami and Havana are via a U.S. Government-licensed charter service provider. Charter flight schedules are not finalized until closer to your departure, so when booking domestic flight connections, we highly recommend that you allow at least 5 hours for connection time, or stay overnight in Miami after the program. Our special negotiated rates at the Crowne Plaza include a 24 hour airport shuttle for your convenience. Travel Certification: Shortly after we receive your final payment, we will email you the official Travel Certification form that all passengers will need to complete, sign and return to Friendly Planet via fax or email in order to travel to Cuba.

Terms & Conditions: Please review our terms & conditions for this package.

Cancellations: If something comes up and you need to cancel your trip, please let us know as soon as possible. All cancellations must be made in writing. Cancellation fees vary by package; please see the cancellation fees for this package.

A Nile River Cruise on the Sonesta St. George | Egypt

In February of 2020, I spent just over a week in Egypt on tour organized by Spiekermann Travel . We flew into Cairo from JFK New York on Egyptair, spent a few days touring the sights there, before flying south to begin our cruise on the Nile River. It was the first cruise I’ve ever experienced. While it was a much smaller, more intimate experience than the massive cruise liners you see in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, it was still a unique travel experience to cross off the list. Since we saw and did so much in Egypt, I wanted to write about the cruise separate from the sights of Cairo.

Flight from Cairo to Luxor

After two whirlwind days in Cairo, it was time to fly south to get on the boat. We took a 1-hour flight from Cairo to Luxor, where we boarded the ship the Sonesta St. George. It was a smooth flight, and the transfer to the ship was seamless, thanks to the organization by the travel company.

Luxor Highlights

Karnak complex & luxor temple.

The first stop on the tour was Karnak Temple in Luxor, an incredibly impressive complex of massive pillars and temples dating back to 2000 B.C. It’s mind-blowing to visit, it’s hard to imagine how such massive structures were constructed such a long time ago and how they’ve withstood the test of thousands of years.

Luxor Temple sits on the east bank of the Nile River and is another fascinating site to see that we visited on our first day. It was first constructed in 1400 BC and is full of temples built by Rameses II, Tutankhamun, and Amenhotep III over the centuries. Uniquely, this temple is not dedicated to an Egyptian God or a pharaoh after their death, but instead, it was constructed for royalty ceremonies during the lives of the rulers, such as coronations.

It’s an all-consuming feeling to wander through such incredible history, bringing to life things that before coming to Egypt had only existed in books I’d read or in shows on the History Channel.

I felt like I could spend hours wandering these structures, straining my neck to stare up at the pillars and the paintings that decorated the tops of them – with the original colors preserved through thousands of years.

Valley of the Kings

This my favorite thing I saw and experienced in Egypt. The Valley of the Kings is an area of tombs cut into the rock, each dedicated to various pharaohs over the centuries of ancient Egypt. Touring the monuments takes you on a decline down into the rock, and the walls the entire way are covered in colorful inscriptions, hieroglyphs, and paintings. It was genuinely breathtaking how well preserved the pictures are in the tombs. You could spend a whole day wandering through the various temples, but we had to pick the top three to get on our way to other sites.

Do NOT miss the Valley of the Kings if you find yourself in Luxor. My top tip would be to get there as early as possible to avoid the large crowds that squeeze their way into the tombs and crowd your view.

Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple

Another fantastic site to see in Luxor is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the longest-reigning woman of ancient Egypt. Her reign was considered one of the most peaceful and prosperous of Egyptian history. You’ll be impressed by the structures of the temple, and the paintings on bits of the interior.

Queen Hatshepsut’s temple is a really cool (but actually hot!) stop on the tour – don’t forget sunscreen and a hat when you go to Egypt. The sun was beating down at this point in the day, and it would be easy to burn if you aren’t careful as there’s no shade at most points on the tour.

Edfu Highlights

After exploring Luxor, we sailed overnight to Edfu, a distance of about 110km. Here we’d explore more historical sites before cruising to our final stop on the boat trip in Aswan.

Temple of Horus

The Temple of Horus is one of the best-preserved temples of ancient Egypt and is the first site we toured in Edfu. It was constructed between 237 and 57BC, making it one of the “newer” structures of Ancient Egypt, built during the Ptolemaic years. It’s the largest temple dedicated to the God Horus.

We toured this temple at night, which was a unique experience to have, seeing the ancient structures illuminated in the dark instead of the daylight. I enjoyed this tour a lot, and my cousin snapped some amazing images in the dark of Kom Ombo. Kom Ombo sits between Edfu and Aswan, on the east bank of the Nile River.

Temple of Philae

Philae is a temple in Nubia, a region that covers southern Egpyt and northern Sudan. It’s a beautiful temple reached on a small motorized boat, as it’s on a tiny island in the Nile River.

I think this was my favorite temple and spot apart from the Valley of the Kings. The view is beautiful, right on the water, and here the Nile looks much cleaner than it does farther north in Cairo.  The temple is not as well-preserved, but still a wonder to marvel at. If you’re a cat lover, you’re going to love this stop. All around the temple and especially at the cafe, there are dozens of cats living here! A man who worked at the cafe feeds them, so we gave him extra money for cat food when he summoned all of them around us. If you don’t like cats – this could be a nightmare!

An interesting story we learned at this point in the tour was about the Nubian people who inhabit this southern region of Egypt. Nubians are darker than northern Egyptians, who look more middle-eastern or Mediterranean. A fascinating story we learned was that during the Ottoman Empire’s invasion in Egypt, the Sultan sent Bosnian soldiers to help fight, and then abandoned them in Nubia. The fair-skinned, light-eyed Bosnians ended up marrying in with the local Nubians, and still to today, hundreds of years later, you can see the influence in the locals with super dark skin and stunning, light blue eyes. They were some of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen, it was amazing to actually see a piece of history still living through a local population.

The final stop on the cruise tour was Aswan, a busy tourist city in southern Egypt. It was the most beautiful city we saw while traveling in this country and definitely merits a stop if you find yourself venturing through this part of the world.

The Aswan Dam

This dam built across the Nile River was a game-changer for the economy of Egypt. It allows them to control the water flow and capture hydroelectric energy, as well as store water used for irrigation. The dam is quite the architectural feat, and the high dam, the dam still used today, was built in the 1960s. Because of the changes to the river and flooding potential due to the construction of the dam, 22 monuments had to be moved to complete the construction. One of them was the Temple of Debod, which was moved to Madrid in Spain in a park close to where I lived when I was there teaching English from 2015-2017.

Felucca Ride

After touring Aswan and making our way back to the boat, it was time for a relaxing felucca ride. A felucca is a sailing boat commonly seen in Aswan and on the Nile in southern Egypt. The ride was pleasant, but be prepared to have the captain and crew try to sell you lots of jewelry and trinkets during the trip. We also encountered one of the hardest-working pickpockets I’ve ever seen, a little boy paddled out to our boat on a small paddleboard, held onto our boat, and slowly worked his way around, softly singing but looking for unsupervised purses or phones. You’ll cruise past the hotel where Agatha Christie wrote “Death on the Nile” on this Felucca Ride.

Spice Market

One of the final experiences before heading back to the boat for our final night on the Nile was a venture to the Aswan Spice Market. It was fairly calm, to my surprise. We did shopping at mostly storefronts instead of a crazy a souk full of vendors. It was a nice ending to a trip. The number of temples and monuments we saw and the information that we learned was completely overwhelming. It’s definitely a trip of a lifetime and left me wanting to come back to Egypt to explore more and see sites we didn’t have time for on this adventure.

Sonesta St. George Cruise Boat Review

This boat provided a rustic elegance with all the amenities. There was a pool, and hot tub on the top deck, lovely lounging chairs, the bedrooms had enough space with sliding glass doors, beautiful bathrooms, and everything you’d need for a short stay. My only criticism of the amenities is that the Wi-Fi is not unlimited and included, and it’s very expensive to reload after you’ve used up the allotted gigabyte. I purchased a wi-fi hotspot when we were in Cairo so I could have access to the internet during the cruise, something to consider if you have to work or check your emails during the trip.

The food was pretty good, some meals were definitely better than others. Some dishes were absolutely delicious, while others felt a little watered-down in terms of flavor, most likely to appease the range of palates that travel on cruise ships. I think this is one of my criticisms of this type of group tour – because you’re going with so many people, there’s less opportunity to explore hidden hole-in-the-wall spots run by locals serving up fantastic food. Most of our meals were in hotels or large establishments that can accommodate a large number of people.

A Nile River cruise is a fabulous way to tour a lot of Egypt in a short amount of time. We saw so many historical sites, learned an incredible amount of information, and had so much fun being together on the small ship. While I don’t think I am a cruise-convert, and you won’t see me on a Royal Caribbean ship anytime soon, I’d highly recommend this type of cruising experience for anyone exploring the southern part of Egypt.

Have you been to Egypt? What was your favorite thing you saw or did? Leave a comment below!

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Travel Highlights of Cairo, Egypt

Comments (3).

[…] these tours, we headed out on our Nile River Cruise, which took up the following 4-5 days, before we returned to Cairo for the final highlights before […]

You photo of Kom Ombo is actually the Luxor temple at night. Kom Ombo Photo: Egypt-0348.jpg. Kom Ombo has no pylons or an obelisk.

[…] a full week of traveling around Egypt, touring Cairo, Giza, and cruising up the Nile River, we returned to the airport to begin the second part of our adventure – exploring Jordan. Jordan […]

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A Journey Into Iraqi Kurdistan

Ancient fortresses, crisp mountain streams, curious people and healing cities: Travelers are discovering the Kurdish region of Iraq, a place of great beauty, haunted by war.

An ancient city gate in Amadiya, in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Credit... Mark Edward Harris

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By Tim Neville

• Jan. 29, 2018

The Mar Mattai monastery clings to the side of a steep mountain, and on a clear day a visitor can stand against its fortresslike walls and discern far below the winsome farmlands of Upper Mesopotamia. Here, in the cradle of civilization, the building is one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world. From this peaceful perch, it is difficult to imagine the horror.

One hazy morning last spring, Harry Schute, a retired Army colonel in his 50s with a Cheshire grin, walked through the monastery’s heavy doors and along its shaded arcades. A boy played with a soccer ball in the courtyard, the boom of each kick cracking off the stone walls. At its peak in the 9th century, the monastery housed as many as 7,000 monks. Today it has five, a bishop, this boy and his family — all survivors of the Islamic State.

We were on the western fringes of Kurdistan, a Netherlands-size, semiautonomous region in the north of Iraq that is home to 5.2 million of the world’s estimated 30 million Kurds, a stateless people who populate the border regions between Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. The fact that the monastery still stood; that this Christian boy and his family were still alive; that a small group of North Americans now felt safe enough to travel here — all of it seemed like a miracle.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, sat 20 miles southwest. In June 2014 , ISIS overran it and the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , stood inside its Great Mosque of al-Nuri and named himself caliph of the terrifying regime. By August 2014, ISIS’ ominous black flags snapped just three miles from where I now stood. Under the cover of night, the monastery’s manager, a priest named Yousif Ibrahim, whose brother had already been murdered by the militants, spirited away scores of ancient documents, the last of the monastery’s once magnificent library, and even a discolored hand bone fragment believed to have belonged to St. Matthew the Hermit, who founded the monastery in 363 A.D. He was certain the monastery would be lost. But then the airstrikes began and the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi Army turned the tide on the ground. The caliphate began to crumble.

It was now May 2017 and most of the artifacts had been returned to the monastery. This was one of the first times that Mr. Schute had brought travelers here since ISIS had come so close. Today Mr. Schute believes that Kurdistan could be one of the world’s great travel destinations if people would only stop confusing it with the Iraq they see in the news.

To be sure, Kurdistan is nothing like the Iraq of Mosul but a Middle Eastern Montana with ruins: a cooler, welcoming tableau of crisp mountain streams and scrappy peaks. A traveler can ski at a new resort serviced by gondolas or wander through the sun-roasted walls of the deepest canyon in the Middle East. You can drink city water from the taps and stroll around Erbil, the regional capital, concerned with only how to decline, politely, invitations to drink tea.

“Hello, my friend, have some bread.”

“Come, sit.”

“Please, mister, enjoy my country.”

For now, the war with ISIS was still winding down. Soon we would watch a 500-pound coalition bomb erupt over the militants’ last stronghold in Mosul and send a huge mushroom cloud curling over the city. The concussion, heavy and round, would ring for miles. Here at the monastery, though, on this pleasant spring day, birdsong ricocheted off the cliffs and the only thing to explode were the poppies.

As a West Point history major with a soft spot for heavy metal, Mr. Schute had been a state trooper in New Jersey before being called to Iraq in April 2003 to command a United States Army Reserve civil affairs battalion. “Those are the guys who help get people and things out of the way so the Army can come in and break stuff,” he said. Soon he became something of a celebrity as the senior American officer in Kurdistan; to this day, the Kurds — who view Americans as their liberators for ousting Saddam Hussein — recognize him on the street and ask for photographs with him. As his tour drew to a close, Mr. Schute began to feel anxious.

“It was like there was a hole in me,” he said. “I felt I was in the middle of contributing worthwhile things and I wanted to continue to contribute. I wanted to stay.”

The Kurdistan Regional Government eventually offered him a job in Erbil, about 225 miles north of Baghdad. For a history buff, Kurdistan was a dream. He could hear swords ringing on grassy fields where ancient armies collided. He ran his hands along the ramparts of forgotten fortresses and felt the dampness in the crypt-like passages of mystical shrines. He learned Kurdish and married a Kurd.

In 2003 at a Kurdish investment seminar in Erbil, Mr. Schute met Douglas Layton, an American who came to Kurdistan in 1992. Mr. Layton, whose round spectacles and woolen cap lend him the air of a paperback spy, had survived a $1 million bounty on his head, courtesy of Saddam Hussein. After the dictator’s capture and execution, Mr. Layton journeyed to Hussein’s palace in Baghdad, where he found his outlandish throne and sat in it. “You’re gone,” Mr. Layton whispered to Saddam’s ghost, “and I’m still here.”

Mr. Schute and Mr. Layton, who had been working for the Meridian Health Foundation, both knew of Kurdistan’s cultural riches and friendly people, so they joined forces to create what eventually became Kurdistan Iraq Tours , the only inbound tourism operator in Kurdistan. The idea seemed absurd.

“Everyone said no one will come to Iraq, and I said but they’ll come to ‘the other Iraq!’” Mr. Layton recalled. “I believed, and I still believe, that tourism is the future.”

For their main local guide, they hired and trained Balin Zrar, a charismatic, chain-smoking Kurd. Mr. Zrar had spent seven years running an Italian restaurant in London after he smuggled himself to Europe — an epic tale that involved time in an Iranian prison camp and riding for days curled atop a spare tire under a tractor-trailer. After the London bombings, Mr. Zrar returned to Kurdistan to dabble in real estate. For the guide-position interview, Mr. Layton asked him if he liked history. “I hate history,” replied Mr. Zrar, now in his early 40s, and the candor landed him the job. No one believed he’d be busy.

In 2008, though, things took off. The company landed a contract with California-based Distant Horizons to run its Kurdistan cultural trips and soon others followed. Momentum built. By 2011 The New York Times put Iraqi Kurdistan on its annual list of places to go . National Geographic Traveler did the same. “Top Gear,” the British television show, filmed a special there. In 2012 tourism arrivals surged 30 percent, year-over-year, to about 2.2 million visitors. Copycat inbound companies sprang to life. Starwood, Kempinski and Marriott lined up to manage new luxury hotels. By spring 2014, Kurdistan Iraq Tours had 15-person groups booking 11-day itineraries and was actually making some money.

Then, ISIS showed up.

The militants steamrolled down the Tigris and pushed into Kurdistan. They got so close to Erbil’s city gates that even Mr. Schute was worried. Tourism companies shut down. Seventy hotels closed. Many flights ceased. “We were the last guys standing,” Mr. Layton said.

But all through those awful years the men worked behind the scenes, speaking to lawmakers and publishing a gorgeous, comprehensive guidebook to the region. As soon as ISIS was gone they knew travelers would come wandering back.

THE RED-EYE FROM AMMAN touched down just before dawn in Erbil where Mr. Zrar waited. He had a slim build and black hair flecked with gray. He fidgeted, as most Kurdish men do, with a string of beads called a tasbih. Outside the air was hazy and cool.

Our contingent of five North Americans had pretty much spent a lifetime traveling. Even so, only one of us, the head of an adventure travel trade association, had visited Kurdistan before. This time he’d brought along his son, who’d turn 17 on the trip. A Canadian expat living in Hong Kong and a photographer from Los Angeles who had been to North Korea 10 times rounded out our group.

We piled into a mini bus and rolled into the city. Rows of half-finished skyscrapers rose from the earth like the picked-over rib cage of a great steely beast. Barbershops, bookstores, mosques and carts laden with wild cucumbers and cigarettes scrolled by the window. Unlike Iraqi Arabs, few Kurdish women wore head scarves. If you ignored the road signs pointing to Baghdad, you could mistake this for Turkey.

The plan was to spend a week traveling in a clockwise loop that started and ended in Erbil, taking in cities like Duhok and Sulaymaniyah along the way. We’d hike in the Zagros Mountains, paddle kayaks on Lake Dukan, and eat kebabs and flatbread. Often we’d pause over sugary tea outside noisy bazaars and linger in museums highlighting Kurdish traditions and history. Mr. Layton, who now lives in Connecticut, could not join us, but Mr. Schute, still in Erbil, would spend time with us.

Immediately it became clear that this would be unlike any other trip. Mr. Schute also serves as a senior security adviser to the Kurdish interior ministry and works closely with the Peshmerga, which means “those who face death.” More than 100,000 of these Kurdish soldiers — our allies against Saddam Hussein and ISIS — manned a nearly impenetrable front riddled with tank ditches and checkpoints that has kept Kurdistan an enclave of comparative security while much of the rest of Iraq remains too dangerous for tourists. The Peshmerga, coalition forces and the Iraqis had cornered the last of ISIS’s fighters in Mosul’s old city along the Tigris. The effort to root them out for good was being coordinated through the Zerevani Peshmerga headquarters outside Erbil. Mr. Schute arranged to take us there.

C-17s roared overhead as we arrived. In the distance you could see a dome that the South Koreans had built for a gym and several squat metal buildings. Guards led us into a room with a long table set with bananas and apricots and cold cans of Pepsi. United States Army Lt. Col. Darin E. Huss, the center’s director, and Iraqi and Kurdish generals, came in to answer our questions about the fight. “In 10 days it will be finished, inshallah,” Staff Major Gen. Saad Khalid Yasin told me. (It would be more like six weeks.)

Most eye-opening of all, though, was the base’s Mad Max junkyard of captured ISIS vehicles. The militants had welded thick armored plates around old Soviet personnel carriers and attached grids of rebar along their sides to disperse incoming rocket blasts. Some rigs had heavy metal prows to better ram a checkpoint. Others had been reduced to mangled heaps of metal. I climbed inside one that had been scorched beyond all recognition. On the floor lay a chalky white bone. Lamb. Someone’s lunch had ended poorly.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS we took in more mainstream sites. We strolled around Erbil’s citadel, a fortress on a mound, that dates to 6000 B.C., and mingled with Arab Iraqis from the south who seemed overjoyed to friend an American on Facebook. I stuck my nose in sacks of za’atar and sumac in the city’s frenetic bazaar and watched two teen lovebirds — she in a hijab, he in jeans — kiss behind a tree in a park where no one could see but God.

The next morning our driver headed north toward the Mar Mattai monastery. We slipped past wheat fields, gas stations with knockoff names like “Shall” and “Nobil,” and a refinery — a reminder of Kurdistan’s agricultural economy and the fact that Iraq controls some of the richest oil fields in the world, a quarter of which lie in Kurdistan. Kids played on the banks of the Greater Zab River where earthen bunkers once shielded Iraqi tanks during the 2003 invasion. This was the Green Line, the point behind which Saddam withdrew his forces after the creation of a no-fly zone over Kurdistan following his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The air turned hair-dryer hot as we wrapped up our time at the monastery. From there we drove to a field just outside a village called Amian. A lone cow stood in the grass. A kid in a yellow shirt rode by, waving, on a bike. In the distance rose a gumdrop-shape dollop of earth. It was a tell, or a man-made hill formed when ancient villages are built and rebuilt atop one another over thousands of years until they’re abandoned and the grass reclaims them.

Kurdistan is littered with these. Very few of them have been excavated, Hashim Hama Abdullah, the director of the Slemani Museum in Sulaymaniyah, would tell me later after I’d spent a morning studying the museum’s ancient stelae, tablets and other artifacts. “No excavating happened at all under Saddam,” he said. “Now teams are coming in.”

Kurdistan has no real budget for tourism projects, which means few attractions have basic things like interpretive signs. This field, which also has never been excavated, would be just a field without Mr. Schute to explain it. In 331 B.C. the Persian king Darius III picked this now peaceful place to face Alexander the Great of Macedonia once and for all. The ensuing fight, the Battle of Gaugamela, saw Darius’s far greater force suffer such horrific losses that soon the Macedon kingdom would stretch from Greece to Pakistan. The battle counts as one of the most important military victories of all time, Mr. Schute said.

“Can you feel it?” he asked, as he imagined the war elephants, the scythed chariots and the tens of thousands of soldiers lining up to hack each other to bits. “I get here and I can feel it.”

We pressed on toward Duhok, a city tucked between the Shandukha and Spi mountains, just as rain began to fall. We stopped to take a short hike to see carvings of Assyrian kings left in a hillside and grabbed a lunch of nesik, a lentil soup, and sawer, a bulgur dish served with pickled squash. Murals on walls said “respect the Peshmerga.”

Of all the people that ISIS fought, the militants were particularly vicious toward the Yazidi, one of Iraq’s most mysterious religious minorities, who were massacred by the thousands . The Yazidi allow no outsiders to convert to Yazidism and the contents of their holy text, the Meshef Resh or Black Book, are only for other Yazidi. In the most general of terms, they believe in one god and that the angel cast from heaven in Christian faiths is now the reconciled leader of all angels, and takes the form of a peacock. Some Yazidi don’t wear blue.

The faith holds that every Yazidi should take a pilgrimage to the center of their world, or Lalish, a lovely mountain village about 30 miles southeast of Duhok. The Yazidi believe that Noah’s Ark came to rest here after a snake used its body to plug a hole in the boat, thus saving all of creation.

Yazidi kids gathered around us as we walked toward temples tucked against scruffy hillsides. The village had stone buildings and narrow streets, and families sat together on carpets inside courtyards and on patios. Everyone, like us, was barefoot. Shoes aren’t allowed in Lalish.

“Where you from?” asked a boy in sunglasses.

Another, a teen with immaculate hair, wanted to take a selfie with us. Soon everyone wanted a selfie with us. They followed us toward a shrine with a conical roof. Sheik Adi, a man as holy to the Yazidi as Jesus is to Christians, was buried inside. “Step through the door!” a boy told me, meaning I shouldn’t step on the threshold. Angels rest in doorways.

Inside the air was cool and moist. A woman pressed her forehead against a threshold, kissed it and mumbled. Others walked around Adi’s tomb, chanting; holy water burbled up from deep within the mountain. In one room I found two holes in the floor. One went to heaven, the other to hell, but no one would tell me which was which.

That seemed to be a fitting image for the rest of the trip, which oscillated between breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking anguish. We visited the spectacular town of Amadiya, perched on a butte, perhaps home to the three wise men, and toured refugee centers where children had posted notes for dead parents. We danced in shin-deep water at the Ali Begg waterfall with giggling Arab Iraqi men, then visited Halabja where Saddam murdered thousands of Kurds in chemical gas attacks. I gazed over endless peaks that stretched toward Turkey, while standing in the blown-up husk of one of Saddam’s once-lavish palaces. Never once did I feel unsafe.

Even so: “I don’t know what the future is,” Mr. Zrar told me. “It’s not wise to be hopeful.”

And yet all across the Middle East you get the sense that something deep is afoot and that adventure travel stands at the center. Jordan has a new trans-country trail . Palestinians and Egyptians are learning to rock climb. You can run marathons in Oman. “The act of getting outside and taking a step forward is seen as an act of empowerment,” David Landis, an American who helped coordinate the rise of the Abraham Path, a trail network currently underway from Egypt to Iran, told me.

Near the end of the trip we met Rekan Rasool, 25, who started a hiking and kayaking club for Kurds. In 2010 his Rock Your Bones group had a handful of members. Today it has more than 6,000.

Standing along the Lesser Zab River, he told me how he dreams of opening an outdoor shop in Erbil, of hiking across Kurdistan through the mountains, of getting more women involved in the outdoors. Like Mr. Schute and Mr. Layton, he sees something in Kurdistan that would be obvious were it not for the news.

“When there is no war in my country, Kurdistan is the best place,” he said. He stuffed inflatable kayaks, coolers and tents into his S.U.V. for a long weekend of adventure with his girlfriend. We said goodbye. Then he drove down a road that arced out of sight.

The Kurds voted in September to declare independence from Iraq, a move that triggered Baghdad into placing a punitive ban on international flights into the region. Talks in mid-January hinted that the ban might soon be lifted. The Kurdish news agency Rudaw has an English website and has been covering the flight ban regularly. Until it is lifted, travelers have two options for getting into Kurdistan.

The first is to go overland through Turkey. To do that you would fly to Sirnak or Diyarbakir, both in southeastern Turkey, then cross into Iraqi Kurdistan via the Habur-Ibrahim Khalil border crossing. You’ll need a Turkish visa. The second way is to connect on a domestic flight through Baghdad. To do that, you’ll need an Iraqi visa.

Visa rules for Kurdistan may change as Kurd and Iraqi authorities negotiate the results of the independence vote. For now, passport holders from the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and Japan can get a free 30-day Kurdistan visa at the border crossing and, presumably, upon arrival at the Erbil airport in Kurdistan once flights resume. Again, that may all change. Check the Kurdistan Regional Government website for more information. As of press time the K.R.G.’s Department of Foreign Relations website had removed its webpage related to Kurdish visas.

For these reasons, it’s recommended that would-be travelers find a reputable company to organize their trips and to keep them up-to-date on visa requirements. Kurdistan Iraq Tours (info@kurdistaniraqtours) offers custom trips that can range from single-day excursions to two-week itineraries or more for up to 15 people. Prices are all-inclusive (without flights) and vary depending on the group size, hotels and the exact itinerary. Expect to pay from $2,000 to $9,000. (Note: Kurdistan is a cash economy. You can use a credit card at major hotels but Kurdistan Iraq Tours can only take cash.)

Kurdistan Iraq Tours works with outfitters based in Britain and the United States, such as Steppes Travel , Native Eye Travel , Undiscovered Destinations , Young Pioneer Tours and Spiekermann Travel . Mountain Travel Sobek plans to offer a Kurdistan trip in 2019. Wild Frontiers Travel may add it again in the future.

The State Department strongly advises against traveling to Iraq and it didn’t support the Kurdish referendum. Travel insurance is a must. Companies like World Nomads and First Allied offer coverage in Iraq. It’s also a good idea for United States citizens to register with the State Department through its Smart Traveler Enrollment Program before going. Kurdistan Iraq Tour’s high-level contacts within the Kurdish government allow for a more nuanced and real-time understanding of what’s safe and what isn’t. Situations can change, of course, but I, and other members in my group, never once felt unsafe.

Tim Neville is a frequent contributor to the Travel section.

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