ABOUT ESCAPERIES
Where journeys become stories.
A nature and adventure travel platform for people who want to move through the living world, understand it a little better, and return with more than a folder of pretty images and vague captions.
THE NAME
escape + stories
= Escaperies
The name is a wordplay – travel stories that happen in motion. Every journey becomes a personal Escape Story, written while crossing morning dew, watching a bird nobody can name yet, or realising the forest has been busy the whole time you were looking at the map.
That idea shapes everything here: the journeys, the Field Notes, the practical advice, the scouting stories and the way Escaperies explains the living world rather than simply passing through it.
WHY ESCAPERIES
Useful travel advice, real journeys and stories from the field
Escaperies.com exists for people who want to discover authentic places and traditions, see eye-opening natural and cultural details, meet like-minded travel fellows, and plan better nature-focused travel. It is a home for small-group journeys, but also for useful guidance: destination ideas, route notes, field observations, practical tips and responsible travel advice.
If you want sustainable travel, ecotourism and responsible adventure without the usual cloud of vague promises, you are in the right territory. Step out of the ordinary route. Find your own off-the-beaten path. And preferably know what you are looking at when you get there.
TWO PILLARS, ONE BRAND
We take people into nature and help them understand it
Escaperies combines small-group nature and adventure travel with Field Notes, destination guides and practical travel advice. It stands on two pillars that feed each other. One puts you in the landscape. The other helps you plan, notice and make sense of it – before, during and long after the journey.
01
The journeys
Personally led small-group nature and adventure journeys – active days spent hiking, kayaking, paddleboarding, snorkelling and moving through landscapes worth slowing down for.
What sets the days apart is the guiding: an improvisation-trained sense of group rhythm paired with a conservation biologist’s way of reading the living world around you.
02
Field Notes and useful travel content
Field Notes is the Escaperies blog and content layer: destination guides, route ideas, wildlife and landscape context, responsible travel advice, field stories and practical tips for travellers who want to plan better.
The same ideas also continue through Substack, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and short field updates. You do not need to book a journey to get value from it – the advice, observations and stories stand on their own.
FROM THE FOUNDER
Why I started Escaperies
I spent years working with and in the nature, and the same thing kept happening: the moment someone understood what they were looking at, the whole landscape changed for them. A patch of forest became a conversation. A coastline became a story with characters in it.
I built Escaperies to give people that shift on purpose – active days outdoors, small groups that genuinely connect, and guiding that turns scenery into something you can read. The principles here started with me, but they were always meant to be bigger than me – they are simply how Escaperies travels.
Rolands Ratfelders
Founder, Escaperies
WHAT ESCAPERIES IS BUILT FOR
For travellers who want more from a place
A few simple things Escaperies travellers and readers tend to have in common – and find here.
New places, real traditions
Off-the-beaten-path corners and the people who call them home – the eye-opening, the lived-in, the kind of place you do not properly understand from a brochure.
A real change of pace
A genuine step out of the everyday. Active days in nature have a way of resetting the mind that a beach chair rarely manages on its own.
Useful advice before you go
Field Notes helps you plan better: when to go, how to read a route, what to avoid, where nature matters and how to travel without turning the place into a personal convenience machine.
Like-minded company
Small groups of curious, easy-going travellers, and content for people who would rather understand a place than simply collect it.
WHAT WE STAND FOR
Travel that leaves a positive footprint
A conservation background sits underneath everything Escaperies does. Not as a credential to wave around, but as a way of working that keeps the promises real — and keeps greenwashing off the table.
Biodiversity is the reason, not the decoration. Escaperies starts from the living fabric of a place — habitats, species, ecological connections and the fragile systems that make a landscape more than scenery. If travel helps people notice biodiversity, it can also help them care about what happens to it.
Read the living world, do not just pass through it. A conservation lens turns scenery into a system you can follow. Once the connections come into focus, the background grows a plot — and the journey gets richer for it.
Small groups, light footprint. Groups stay small so the experience stays personal and the place stays close to how we found it. We favour local hosts, local guides and local accommodation, so the value of every journey settles where we travelled.
Responsibility, made of real choices. Sustainability here means small, repeated decisions that respect wildlife and habitats — encounters on nature’s terms, not ours. The aim is to keep moving toward travel that gives back more than it takes.
Travel that raises awareness. People protect what they have understood. Showing someone a living system up close — on the trail and in Field Notes — does quiet, lasting work for the natural world, and turns a good trip into a change in how you see.
Connection is part of the design. An improvisation-led approach to guiding keeps groups present, relaxed and genuinely together. Nature resets the mind; good company makes the reset stick. Both are things we plan for, not leave to luck.
THE ESCAPERIES LENS
What shapes the way we travel and publish
Conservation biology
25+ years in nature, biodiversity and field work. The lens that reads a landscape as a living, connected system instead of a backdrop.
Sustainability expertise
A working understanding of responsible and regenerative travel – what those words mean in practice, not on a label, and where the real trade-offs sit.
Improvisation & group craft
An improvisation theatre background applied to real groups: rhythm, presence, timing, and staying calm when the perfect plan meets weather and reality wins by a small but decisive margin.
Useful travel content
Field Notes and the wider Escaperies content layer turn field experience into practical advice, destination context, route ideas and nature interpretation for people planning better journeys.
The journeys and the content come from the same field-tested mix: nature knowledge, responsible travel practice, group leadership and useful explanation.
LATVIA & THE BALTICS
A clear brand note
Latvia and Baltic guided tours are operated through my Latvia-focused brand, Baltic Nature Adventures. Escaperies is the international journey platform. Same guiding values, different purpose.
TWO WAYS IN
Come for a journey, or come for the reading
Whether you are looking for nature and adventure travel experiences or practical travel advice both our pillars are open to you. See where the journeys go next, or start with Field Notes and let the curiosity lead.