The co-ed and women-only adventures that make up each WanderTour are created to provide rich cultural experiences and unique programs while participants travel in comfort. All tours feature activities that allow the group to get to know the locals while taking part in one-of-a-kind experiences.
Here are some highlights of a typical tour:
- Take a hands-on cooking class in Vietnam.
- Enjoy a private musical performance in Varanasi with world-renowned musicians and dancers.
- Stay in a home on stilts in Northern Vietnam where you’ll enjoy locally-made rice wine.
- Learn how to wrap a sari in India.
- Marvel at sunrise at the Taj Mahal.
- Get your horoscope read in Rajasthan.
- Photograph a private performance in Papua New Guinea, where you’ll watch 10 tribal groups prepare for a singsing.
- Meditate with a monk in Bhutan.
- Hike remote regions of the Himalayas.
With intimate knowledge and contacts at the destinations offered, WanderTours founder, Beth Whitman, has hand-tailored each WanderTour to ensure unique experiences that cannot be found on mass-marketed, large-group tours.
WanderTours are an extension of the Wanderlust and Lipstick brand and were created to accommodate the growing demand for co-ed tours in addition to the popular women-only adventures.
Beth Whitman
Beth Whitman is the founder and editor of WanderTours and Wanderlust and Lipstick. For more than 23 years, she has been traveling the globe as a contemporary Wanderer: combining her love for travel with volunteer work, adventure trips, travel writing and business. She has backpacked through Nepal and hiked the Himalayan foothills in Bhutan; ridden a motorcycle solo from Seattle to Panama; worked with orphans in Vietnam through various volunteer programs; driven the AlCan Highway to Alaska; and maneuvered the back roads of France’s Dijon region in a rental car. In addition to overseeing all aspects of the WanderTours, she leads selective trips.
She’s thrilled to lead tours for her growing community of Wanderlusters. These open-minded women (and men) always bring a new perspective to a destination and she loves watching the friendships that are formed within the group as well as being part of it – no matter the location or activity.
Lauren Van Mullem
Lauren is the US-based support person and the client liaison for WanderTours. She loves helping people prepare to venture out into the world and live their travel dreams! Lauren is a California-based food and travel writer who puts down her pen and picks up her calendar to help organize WanderTours. When she isn’t traveling or writing about it, she loves swapping stories with fellow wanderers. Remind her to tell you about the time she and Beth faced down wild dogs and an angry bull in Rajasthan… That particular WanderTour is her favorite adventure to date.
Joslin Fritz
Joslin Fritz has a considerable background in adventure travel and as a tour leader. She’s always looking out for her next challenge, and has had tested her nerves and muscles in a variety of ways; Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, white-water rafting in Chile, backpacking in Patagonia, maneuvering through Djemaa el-Fna market in Morocco, braving the public buses in Nepal, volunteering at a children’s home in India and bungee jumping over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
As a guide, she loves to get to know the participants and share the beauty of the destination with them.
A past participant on the WaL India tour said, ” Joslin was absolutely fabulous! She taught me how to look at the glass half-full. Personality-wise Joslin has everything it takes for a guide!”
Her favorite song to sing at Karaoke is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, favorite poem is Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman, favorite flavor ice cream is mint chocolate chip, favorite podcast is ‘Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me’ on NPR and favorite place to travel is India.
