Safarine has been building trips in Thailand since 1995, from offices in Kanchanaburi and Chiang Mai, under Thai tourism licence TAT 14/03149. Three decades in the same two provinces is the whole proposition: the guides are people we work with year after year, the villages know us, and the routes come from walking them rather than from a supplier catalogue.

The published programme runs to forty-two trips across Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, Bangkok and Ayutthaya. Most of it is single-day: a waterfall and a river, a working farm, a temple morning, a day on foot in country that rewards slow movement. A dozen or so programmes run two to seven days, including regional loops through the north — Mae Hong Son, Chiang Dao, Chiang Rai — and longer stays around Kanchanaburi built on trekking, kayaking and time with elephants at a genuine sanctuary.

Groups are small, typically two to eight people, which is what makes the difference between watching a place and being in it. Guiding is in English and French. Trips are quoted individually rather than sold at a shelf price, because dates, numbers and how hard you want to walk change what a day actually costs to run properly.

Tell us when you are travelling and what you would like the trip to feel like. We reply personally.