Our Signature Collection is Elevating Small-Group Adventures… Here’s How
At its best, travel does more than show you where you are. It helps you understand what gives a place its character, how its history still shapes daily life, and why certain moments stay with you long after you return home.
That kind of understanding does not come from moving quickly or collecting experiences for the sake of it. It comes from going beyond surface-level encounters and spending time with what sits at the heart of a destination: its culture, its people, its landscapes and the rhythms that connect them.
This is the intention behind the Exodus Signature Collection. These elevated small-group adventures are designed to venture to the heart, each unpinned by five key elements: Signature Experiences, Signature Stays, Signature Days, Signature Guides and Signature Legacy.
Here’s how they help you venture to the very heart.
Signature Experiences: Live Moments Shaped by Rare Access and Expert Insight
Understanding a place begins with how you are invited into it. And our Signature Experiences do just that. You’ll enjoy several Signature Experiences on each itinerary, each carefully chosen to take you beyond the ordinary with private invitations, rare encounters, and experiences few will ever share.
In Japan, access is rarely overt. Meaning is revealed through formality, restraint and repetition. On our Signature Japan trip, experiences are shaped to reflect that reality. In Kyoto, you share a kaiseki dinner hosted by an apprentice geisha, where the structure of the evening matters as much as the food itself. Seasonal ingredients, precise service and measured conversation offer insight into a culture built on discipline and continuity rather than display.
Later, in Koyasan, a Buddhist monk leads you on a special night walk through Okunoin Cemetery. Lantern light moves across moss-covered stone as prayers echo through cedar forest, and the sense of history feels present rather than narrated. It’s a sacred encounter few visitors get to experience in this way.
Walking sections of the ancient Nakasendo Trail extends that feeling of being part of something special. Stone paths once used by feudal lords and merchants still connect post towns, farmhouses and forest shrines, revealing a Japan shaped by movement and trade that continues quietly alongside modern life.
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Signature Japan | Through Temples & Time
Signature Stays: Make Your Nights as Memorable as Days
A journey does not pause when the day’s activities are over. Where you stay determines how deeply the experience settles.
Our Signature Stays are chosen because they hold context and continuity, allowing the atmosphere of a place to extend into the evening for nights as memorable as days.
In Tuscany, Castello di Gargonza plays that role. Once a fortified medieval village defending Siena, it remains enclosed by its original walls, its narrow streets and stone towers, forming a living settlement rather than a restored façade. Staying here over several nights lets you really feel at home. You return to the same courtyards, the same views across wooded hills, the same rhythm of village life.
The same principle underpins Signature Stays elsewhere. In Vietnam, Topas Ecolodge sits high above the Sapa valleys, where cloud drifts through rice terraces and the surrounding mountains define the pace of each day. In Egypt, nights aboard the Safiya dahabiya recall the golden age of Nile travel, with evenings unfolding under sail as the river sets the tempo. In Greece, Kapsaliana Village Hotel offers a restored Cretan settlement centered on a former monastery olive press, where stone cottages, gardens and shared tables root you firmly in place.
Signature Days: Shape Your Time to Your Interests
Every itinerary features a Signature Day, giving you the freedom to choose from a curated selection of experiences designed to reveal place and culture in greater depth.
In Egypt, this might involve spending time with a Nubian family along the Nile, sharing a meal and learning palm-leaf weaving as part of daily life, or approaching Philae Temple by boat, understanding its setting as much as its story. Others might choose to travel south to Abu Simbel, to marvel at the scale and intent of ancient power.
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Signature Egypt | Spirit of the Nile
Signature Guides: Discover More With Unrivalled Local Knowledge
A destination is nothing without someone to show you it – deeply, as they experience it. Our Signature Guides are chosen for their ability to connect experience with understanding. In Egypt, a hand-picked Egyptologist brings clarity to thousands of years of history, linking temples, tombs and modern life into a coherent narrative, whether on foot or drifting between riverbanks aboard a private dahabiya.
In Costa Rica, the role is different but equally essential. Here, you can meet naturalists and conservation specialists, reading landscapes shaped by water, migration and interdependence. In Caño Negro, a Ramsar-listed wetland near the Nicaraguan border, they navigate waterways where caiman, monkeys and migratory birds converge, explaining how seasonal flooding sustains ecosystems and local livelihoods alike.
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Signature Costa Rica | Where the Wild Answers
Signature Legacy: Create Change That Lasts After the Journey Ends
Our Signature Legacy moments – experiences to remember that help people and nature thrive – are shaped by time spent with people who live and work in the places you travel through.
In South Africa, Signature South Africa | Wild Coasts & Winelands brings this into focus along the country’s southern shoreline. Walking the coast with a specialist guide, you learn to identify edible seaweeds and understand how responsible harvesting supports fragile marine ecosystems.
Later, in Hermanus, a local guide leads a visit through Zwelihle township, where conversations with makers and small-business owners reveal the realities of daily life beyond the town’s seafront. Sharing home-style dishes and stories offers context that no overview could provide.
Elsewhere on the journey, time spent at Dyer Island and the African Penguin & Seabird Sanctuary brings conservation into sharp focus. Learning directly from specialists working with one of the world’s most threatened penguin species, you observe behaviour up close and see how rescue, rehabilitation and research are helping protect fragile populations along this coastline.
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Signature South Africa | Wild Coasts & Winelands
Why Choose a Signature Collection Adventure?
Our Signature Collection is shaped by deliberate choices: where to linger, what to leave out, and which moments deserve your full attention. They are built around access that has been earned, not arranged, and experiences chosen for their ability to explain a place rather than simply showcase it.
Signature Collection journeys prioritise connection, venturing to the heart of culture, landscape, and to the people who shape both. Encounters are exclusive and immersive, feeling grounded rather than transactional. And the journey stays with you not because of what you saw, but because of what you came to understand.
That is why choosing a Signature Collection small-group adventure matters. It is travel designed to venture to the heart of a destination and remain there long enough for it to matter.
Explore the Signature Collection
Discover journeys shaped by rare access, expert guidance and stays that give depth to every day.
