Untravelled Paths Reviews 658

Me and my partner visited Transilvania with our lovely guide, Dragos. We both love history and nature, and our experience with UTP was a wonderful mix of both. You can tell they put a lot of thought in curating the itinerary. We had a lovely time and can definitely recommend this tour.

Our guide Amir made our experience great. He is the most polite, friendly young man and is an asset to Unravelled Paths. He made us feel safe and was very knowledgeable, he felt like a friend to us and nothing was too much trouble to him.
The trip was excellent, what a stunning country. Beautiful in every way, safe, friendly and well worth a visit

Great time on my mini montenegro trip it was breath taking stunning scenary with my wonderful guide llija. He was knowledgeble caring and fun to be with he was a top man. The itinary and accomadation was very good too.
Jeannie coppen

My husband, step-son and myself went on a 10 day trip with UTP to Montenegro. It was a fantastic trip. Everything went according to plan with no hick-ups from being met at the airport on arrival to being dropped off for departure, to everything in between. Our guide Ilija was brilliant and really put in the time and effort. Part of this trip was for my husband and his son to discover their Montenegrin roots. Due to a lack of information, this was not easy. However, Ilija succeeded which was truly the icing on the cake of a perfect trip. Although we had never used or heard of UTP before, I would not hesitate to recommend them.

My wife, youngest son (40) and I recently went to Montenegro for the first time, it was a fantastic trip. All our travelling from the airport arrival to airport departure was seamless. The hotels were excellent, meals brilliant, as were all locations. What made it, however, above and beyond was our guide/driver Ilija who went all out to ensure we had a wonderful time. Part of this trip was to discover my grandfather's roots – easier said than done. Despite having only the tiniest bit of information to go with, Iliya was able to not only find the church he was baptised in, but also his childhood house. This entailed visiting convents, monasteries and driving up and down narrow mountain roads.

We have gone with Audley twice; we found UTP to be just as good. Excellent company, guide, and holiday.

This was a very unique trip, with a very knowledgeable guide, Eduard Sandu, but to his friends, (of which we became) Edi. We did the Dracula experience over 4 nights and 5 days. The hotel accommodation changed daily and each hotel was lovely in their own right. The hotels were all centrally positioned and very comfortable. Now, on to our trip. I could talk for hours about the tour, but I'll just highlight my favourite bits. Over the 4 days, we managed to visit all the key places relevant to Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula! I thought I knew a lot of information to begin with, about the Prince and the 'fictional' character, however, Edi managed to intrigue me and grow my understanding to another level. We visited many key places, the monastery, where the body of Vlad is buried which is my personal favourite, such tranquillity and features the original paintings from when it was built. The birth place and actual house of Vlad was on the tour, this has now been turned in to a restaurant/coffee house, of course I had to stay and have a coffee with his 'aura'. Unfortunately, the upper level has been turned in to a bit of a gimmicky area, with a man in a plastic mask, laying in a coffin, with a chair next to him. I obviously participated, but felt that it was a bit 'tacky', it could have been presented in a much more relevant way. The Princely Court was amazing, truly mind boggling to think how they lived back then. Again, like the monastery, there were paintings on the walls, hundreds of years old. We visited the old town of Brasov, where Vlad attacked and had our evening meal in Dracula restaurant, where the food was very tasty, albeit a little expensive. The tour wouldn't have been complete without a visit to Bran Castle. Now every true Dracula fan will know that Vlad never lived or visited there, but it is iconic through Bram Stokers book and absolutely worth visiting. I managed to make a few more friends on this trip and it was lovely to chat with other people that understood the fascination. It really doesn't matter what age you are or how you dress, people on this tour share a specific interest and you can't help but be swept along. Even for the poor suffering significant others, only on the trip for their loved ones, fun and intrigue is to be had. I can not recommend Edi or this tour enough!

We have travelled with Untravelled Paths multiple times and each time they exceed themselves. We love having the itinerary planned for us, it takes all the stress our of planning, and they make sure we see the most incredible places.

Great pre trip communication for our Ice Hotel Experience with this super professional company. Every pick up was on time. All hotels were clean & comfortable, but best of all was our friendly, knowledgeable guide Dragos, who really made Romania come alive.
Thank you for a super memorable trip.

A truly well organised trip going through the heartland of Transylvania with so much to see and enjoying the beautiful scenery on route.
the tour guide was an encyclopedia of information and always making sure we were happy on route.
the hotels were of a good standard and the breakfast was very good.
I would fully recommend this trip as being of great value and the sledging experience was truly amazing.

Thanks Edy you was fantastic for the group.

I really enjoyed my trip to Romania, at the end of Jan uary 2025. the object was to sleep one night in their Ice Hotel, as I had prviously been to the one in Lapland. The weather was great, I saw quite a bit of the country and was delighted that there were no motorways, we just drove thru' little towns & villages. I am quite elderly, so my chauffer/guide, Edi was wonderful, very pacient and helpfull. I thought that the trip was well organised with visits to interesting sites and towns. The hotels were all perfectly adequte. My only complaint was that I was left in the Ice Hotel for far too long, from 9 pm to 8 am - comparing to my previous experience, where we were in the Ice Hotel bar until midnight, then slept till 7 am, but there were about 20 of us, whereas here I was the only one , not a fault of the organisers. I would have preferred tp have been able to stay in the chalet bar/restsaurant till midnight, especially as there was an interesting group of people there & then go to sleep in the Ice Hotel. Going on guided tours of various places was a good idea, but UP should tell people that these are paid in cash. I would like to add to prospective future customers, that you don't have to sleep in the Ice Hotel, as there is a hotel/restaurant on site as well. I congratulate the owner on setting up such an interestingcompany, and if he is ever in LOndon, I would love to meet him.

Excellent tour and service we really appreciated the organisation and hospitality provided by Dragos!

My son and I had a trip to Romania and Transylvania in early Jan. Everything about the trip was brilliant but mainly because of our wonderful guide Edi. He was knowledgeable, funny and accommodating when I wasn't feeling great. He has a wealth of local knowledge and a great sense of humour and is a credit to the company. The itinerary was great and the company itself gave such amazing service. 100% recommend these guys

My partner won the ‘Husky Experience’ in a work raffle that originally was supposed to be in Slovenia. For reasons not given this was then relocated to Romania. Normally we travel to other places and self drive and stay in hotels we choose but unfortunately this was not the case. Untraveled Paths puts you up in hotels they choose and all bar one did not have a lift. We are both able bodied but I was aware that anyone with disabilities or lack of strength would struggle to get their luggage up multiple flights of stairs (we saw an elderly lady having such problems at one of the hotels). The vast majority of the ‘experience’ involved driving 800km in a Renault Trafic van to multiple locations. Traffic in Romania can be heavy so over the course of 6 days we assess we spent around 16 hours sat in the vehicle which was less than ideal.
The highlights of the trip were supposedly Bran Castle and of course the main headliner event-husky sledding. Bran Castle is impressive from the outside but inside its a case of slowly jostling behind masses of tours and the whole town obviously has commercialised the whole ‘Dracula’ piece.
And so to the Main Event and the reason my partner bid a lot of money- The Husky Experience. You make a 2 hour drive (with an unknown reason earlier start and so breakfast was a doggy bag of unpleasantness from the hotel) to be met by the Husky guides. The itinerary given plainly stated: ‘You will be given proper instructions in learning how to drive a husky sled. Then, you’ll get to try it out for yourself!’
So much for the promise-here’s the reality: They prep the dogs and then you are invited to sit in the sled with the driver behind you. The course is 2km long (you can apply to do a 10km course which we did. They advised us to book when a few days before travel due to the weather. When we tried to do that we were told when we arrived that this option had been fully booked up weeks ago and was not available). 2km on a dog sled doesn’t take long and so we made around 3 stops along the route for unknown reason (I suspect to make it seem longer). I was filming the ride (which is magical by the way) and confirmed afterwards that the entire ‘experience’ lasted a whole 10 minutes. So the USP of the trip over 6 days (husky ride) in reality was a 10 minute taxi ride with dogs. No instruction. No driving them yourself as stated. You sit there get dragged along and 10 mins later it’s over. Guide takes a few photos and then its back in the van for many hours whilst the conveyer belt of next groups get their turn.
Seriously?
The Rembrandt Hotel in Old Town Bucharest is noisy and is on the edge of an area best described as ‘Costa Del Sol’ in Romania. Hordes of pubs and strip clubs and people trying to get you into eat at their restaurant. May as well be Corfu just colder. You get woken up by drunken idiots screaming and shouting at 0430- just what you want when you’d off at 0800 (after a mediocre breakfast-final day we ate somewhere else).
So in short this trip was a total rip off and completely misrepresented by what was promised. We still don’t know why Slovenia was taken off the table (Slovenia is fantastic by the way) but we felt cheated and I felt it was 6 days of our lives we weren’t getting back. The driver was a nice guy but was struggling to pad the trips out. Not his fault. To hinge your entire 5-6 day event around a 10 minute experience is disingenuous and frankly insulting considering how much it cost. All the documents we received say the same thing as a Headline- ‘The Transylvania Husky Experience’. Make it the ‘extensive road trip of South East Romania experience with a few attractions and a quick husky taxi ride’ would be more fitting.
We also calculated how much it would have cost us to replicate the trip ourselves. Answer was roughly half of what was paid out so that’s double the insult. My other half now knows NOT to bid on these con jobs at charity events!
Sort this out Untravelled Paths. I hope this review costs you business as frankly you deserve it.

I took the dracula experience with my father from the 07/01/2025-13/01/2025 and it was amazing, the hotels we stayed in were very clean and had very helpful staff and our tour guide dragos was amazing, very kind and helpful, I fully recommend this trip.

Our tour of Romaina was everything I expected and more, all the sights and experiences were fantastic. With my favourite being our NYE overnight stay in the Ice Castle (all the people running the castle and lodge were so friendly and accommodating) and the husky bob sliding ( I recommend you extend this to at least 1hr, before you go, as 15min was not long enough). Romaina was such a beautiful country.

Eddie, our tour guide, was amazing!!! One of the best tour guide we have ever had. We would definitely travel again with this company.

Overall we were happy with the tour and the experience. We had a lot of fun with the people on the tour and with the tour guide. Some disappointment was that even though I mention this before, we could not opt in for any optional extras such as city tours as everything was booked out:( We came a long way from Australia and booked last year in February and so we are a bit disappointed that a) no arrangements were offered before and only in last minute b) Visiting the Outdoor museum also got cancelled and no alternative arrangement were made.

Fabulous experience in Lapland. Our guide Edi was so friendly and kind. A brilliant trip all round - the Northern Lights Ranch was super special in particular. Magical memories made for our whole group.

We booked to go on the dracula trip and it was fab, very well looked after by Edi who was kind, knowledgeable and passionate about his country. Hotels were good although the Old Town in Bucharest is noisy and full of lap dancing clubs!! Not ideal. Minibus was a bit cosy, some more room would have been nice!! Loved România and plan to return. Didn’t need to worry about anything, all taken care of. Would definitely recommend.

We were so lucky to have our own private tour with our own local Bosnian guide who made our trip so special! Nothing was too much trouble, we added things to the itinerary to suit our interests. The places we visited were beautiful, amazing and so interesting, our guide was so knowledgeable and no question went unanswered. Our kids (aged 12,10 & 6) had so much fun and the guide was so good with them. Can’t recommend highly enough! Best trip!! We will definitely book another trip in the future

Just come back from the Halloween Dracula experience, and what can I say other than it was an absolute dream come true! What an amazing country, topped off by the absolute rock star Dragos who looked after us from start to finish. I cannot express enough how well organised, informative, and personable Dragos was with our small tour group of 4. The hotels we were booked into were stunning. As a mad Dracula/Vlad the Impaler fan I was blown away by the sites we visited and the history Dragos talked us through. Nothing was too much trouble (even after a few too many palinkas 😂) highly highly recommend UTP, we would not have seen or learnt half as much had we done this on our own, we will definitely be back, thank you!