Today Geographic Bureau is over 25 years. For someone it may seem quite a short story, but for us this is really a lot. Our company was born in 1989 in the Soviet Union. Then the Union collapsed and many economic and political changes took place in Russia. Every time our business had to adapt to these changes and to move on despite all changing conditions.
After the start of M. Gorbachev's perestroika borders were "opening". This was the right time for new start-ups. Before that we could not even have dreamt of running a private business. And then there appeared a chance for everyone who had an idea in mind. It was great and exiting period. After years of borders, limits and control we were all inspired by the "wind of change". We were feeling that we needed to start something new. We really wanted to do something on our own.
So the borders were opened and we decided to show the beauty and vastness of our country to foreign travellers.
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In late 80s - early 90s many travel companies appeared in the market. Most of them were owned by people who used to work for Intourist or other huge state-owned tourist companies. While companies specialising in adventure trips and mountaineering were mainly organised by former sportsmen.
Our story is different. We are all professional geographers that had graduated from St. Petersburg State University. Having worked for scientific research institutes we had been organising many expeditions to various remote areas. We had visited so many wonderful exciting places! We wanted to share these impressions with other people, and open our country to the world! Many of these lands had been closed for foreigners for decades so it was a good chance to start an interesting project. We wanted to show these enormous possibilities for travelling: great and diverse nature along with rich history of the regions.
Nowadays travelling is still important for us, we love to travel and want to offer all possible variety of trips and destinations.
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It took some time after an idea had come up to our minds before we ran the very first group. And this very first trip was the ascent of Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus. Mt. Elbrus, the top of Europe has always been very attractive for travelers. So since then we have been running these trips every year. From the start of our company we have been working in Central Asia, Caucasus, Siberia and Far East. And up to now these regions attract our travellers. Further on other destinations appeared one after the other. Today our operations cover Russia and all former soviet republics.
Geographic Bureau appeared as an adventure travel company and for several years this has been our main specialization. We organised active trips to various places in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, Far East and other regions. As the company grew and developed we began to work out cultural trips too. Today most of these cultural trips cover several countries or regions and involve advanced logistics.
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We never wanted to become a DMC in one certain destination. Being geographers we want to travel everywhere and would be happy to invite our guests to join us in this wonderful way of discovering the world. Our trips published on the website show our capacity and possibilities but this is still only a small part of what we do.
We are always ready for new ideas and explorations, so hopefully in a couple of years we will add more destinations and trips to our story.
To be continued...
January 2015