A Trip to Egypt – by Ron van Kerkwyk

In 2024, and after discussions spanning several years, I arranged for my father Ron and his wife Sherry to join me on my annual UnchartedX Egypt tour.

This was a pretty special occasion for both of us as we don’t get to see each other very often. My father and his wife live in far North Queensland Australia, and in my early 20s, in 2004, I left the country for what has turned out to be ‘for good,’ at least so far. 2 years in Singapore, and then the next nearly 20 years I’ve been living in California, almost exactly on the other side of the world from the Eastern coast of Australia.

I’m happy to report that Dad and Sherry both immensely enjoyed the trip, as seems to be the case for most who join us in Egypt. My father, who’s published a couple of books at this point, has written a review of the trip that you can find below, and I’m grateful to him for the effort.

I and my ‘venture partners’ (as Dad calls them) do work very hard to put on the best experience we can for our guests. I’m very proud to say that many of those who choose to join us on these tours, whether they’re in Egypt, Turkey, the US, or later this year in Peru and Bolivia, are return guests.

I started running these annual trips in 2020 (yep, the height of covid), primarily as a research tool, building them around the ‘special permission’ accesses to sites that are closed to tourism, that I can’t afford to pay for myself, as a way to do on-site independent research and investigation. Also because a lot of people were asking me to do it, as my YouTube channel began to grow in popularity.

These days, I still do them for the research and filming opportunities, we still visit sites each year that are new to me, but also because I very much enjoy them – every time we’ve run an Egypt tour, it’s always been a great group of people. Let’s face it, you have to be a little bit down the rabbit hole to come on my tours. Searching google for ‘Egypt tour,’ will not get you to this website, there’s endless options out there for the ‘regular tourist experience.’ I think of it as a ‘self-selecting group of interested and open minded people.’ One of the things I enjoy seeing the most is our guests making connections and friends – and time has shown that many of these friendships last for years. Our 2020 telegram group is still going, and I know that people on these tours have subsequently flown around the world to visit each other!

I’m confident we put on what is probably the best tour for the money – we certainly do many more ‘special permissions’ than anyone else, and between Yousef, myself, Kyle and Russ, as well as special guests who join us like Mohamed Jabra (probably the top guy in Egypt for reading hieroglyphs) and our Egyptologist tour guides, we show a side of Ancient Egypt and the depth of its mysteries that you just won’t get anywhere else.

Check out my Dad’s article from the 2024 trip below, and if you’re looking for more testimonials, check out the future tours and testimonials page! If you want to join us in Egypt on the 2026 trip, it will be made available soon, but you can get early access to register (they do sell out!) by signing up to support UnchartedX via the value-for-value model at the support page!