Dragons & the Forgotten East, 10 November 2029

Cruise overview

Depart Benoa, Bali, where the Kecak fire ritual burns beneath Uluwatu’s clifftop temple, for Lombok’s turtle-filled Gili shallows, volcano-grown coffee, and a Sasak weaving village. Satonda’s uninhabited crater lake gives way to Komodo, its UNESCO-listed dragons tracked across Rinca’s tawny hills, Padar’s three scalloped bays climbed for their view, and Pink Beach’s crushed coral glowing underfoot, before Larantuka, a devoutly Catholic town of candlelit Portuguese chapels beneath Ile Mandiri’s volcano. Kupang’s Dutch-colonial waterfront gives way to Dili, its Cristo Rei statue watching over a hard-won capital, before the record-breaking, biodiverse reefs of Atauro Island. Darwin’s barramundi-laden frontier markets open the way into Australia’s true wilderness: Seven Spirit Bay, an Arnhem Land refuge almost nobody else reaches, where crocodiles bask and dugongs graze; the Wessel Islands, threading the tidal Hole in the Wall few ships ever attempt; and Yirrkala, where a rare, permitted audience with Yolngu artists and their bark paintings reveals the world’s oldest continuous culture. Thursday Island’s old pearling-lugger port and Green Hill Fort precede the powder beaches of Lizard Island, its Cod Hole and giant clams off the platform, leading at last to Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, where your voyage comes ashore at the threshold of Australia’s underwater wonder.