Unlike most conventional tours, cultural programs do not try to shield travelers from hardship and political tensions. "We're not misleading or exploitative," explains Alicia V. Stevens, travel director for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "We would never take a group somewhere and gloss over the poverty or the fact that the government is a dictatorship."

While such an unvarnished experience is not for everyone, for many it's what makes travel worthwhile. Guest says that the most memorable parts of her trip to Mali were visiting a clinic and meeting with women whose children were suffering from river blindness. "We got to know them about as well as visitors could," Guest says.

One of the chief benefits of tours organized by museums and universities is that they are usually guided by experts in the field. Guest's trip, for instance, was led by Enid Schildkrout, head of the museum's anthropology division and an expert in African ethnology. Similarly, Washington, D.C., chef Francesco Ricchi, whose family owned a restaurant in Tuscany when he was a child, regularly leads a Smithsonian Journeys culinary tour to Italy. Not surprisingly, this kind of access and expert guidance comes at a price, with tours costing as much as $10,000 per person. Of course, for that kind of money, accommodations tend to be luxurious: Travelers to Venice on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art tours, for instance, spend a week at the Hotel Gritti Palace.

If you don't mind roughing it a little, a number of less costly ways to gain cultural understanding are available. Canadian tour operator GAP Adventures, for example, runs small-group trips to more than 60 destinations around the world, with rates starting at less than $100 a night. GAP saves money by using public buses and trains and by booking small, locally owned hotels. Similarly affordable is Global Exchange, a California-based human rights group that leads what it calls Reality Tours in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iran, and South Africa, among other countries. The tours attract politically active clients who are more interested in culture than in comfort—and who want to meet with women's groups, to inspect health facilities, and to visit small villages. As for the level of luxury on such trips: "We tell people not to expect a vacation," says Reality Tours coordinator Sarah Dotlich.

Volunteer Trips
For travelers who want to contribute to a culture at the same time they're learning about it, several organizations offer two- or three-week volunteer vacations all over the globe. Projects range from helping on archaeological digs to teaching English. "The people who participate don't want a canned experience," says Blue Magruder, public affairs director for Earthwatch, which places volunteers in conservation-oriented and scientific programs. "They learn that all the discoveries haven't already been made and aired on PBS."

Muriel Horacek, an alumnus of 30 different Earthwatch trips, has tracked big cats in Namibia, tagged leatherback turtles in the Caribbean, and studied migrating birds in Alaska, Bolivia, Brazil, Israel, Kenya, and Peru. "Meeting and working with the project leader, the local assistants, and the other volunteers is just as rewarding as the actual research work," she says. During one of her trips, an archaeological dig in Peru, an assistant invited the volunteers to his baby's christening and to the all-night party that followed.