About Us

With offices on the Suffolk / Essex border, Native Eye are a team of travel experts who are passionate about the people and places we visit.

We specialise in the unusual. Far from focussing on mainstream adventure travel destinations, Native Eye doesn’t just enable you to get far from the beaten track but redefines what adventure travel is all about – cutting edge exploration to places where traditions have been retained and each experience is unique.

In the words of a recent customer, “It’s like adventure travel was thirty years ago.”

Founded by Jim O’Brien following nearly twenty years of independent and professional travel experience, first as a tour leader and later in senior operations posts for leading adventure travel companies, Native Eye now offers some of the most exciting itineraries on the planet.

We’re a small, but not too small, company. We care about your trip, we’re here to answer your questions and apply a human, common sense and experienced approach to our communication with our travellers, and throughout your journey, both before, during and after your your trip. Obviously we have policies, like any company has to, but we try to be as flexible and personalised as possible. You don’t come through to a call centre or a team of dozens who just see you as another anonymous client, but we treat you in the way we’d like to be treated ourselves. It’s important to every member of our team that you enjoy your trip.

Many of our destinations are challenging – there’s a reason why mass tourism hasn’t reached the shores of Comoros or the Congo, for example, and why not many tour operators venture here. Travelling here sometimes requires a bit of a pioneer spirit, patience, flexibility and on occasion a sense of humour – this is sometimes the reality of pushing the boundaries of travel and tourism.

Read on to find out more.

Why travel with us?

Experience

Unlike most other companies, we have personal experience of the world’s most remote and challenging countries, so when you get in touch we are able to offer well-informed, first hand advice. We’ve travelled the roads, seen the sights and met the people that you can expect to encounter on your trip, and are superbly placed to offer you a level of advice that other companies find it hard to match.

Contacts

Our excellent and enduring relationships with local teams around the globe give you access to countries, regions, activities and accommodation that other companies just cannot offer.

Customer Service

As a small company, we get to know each of our passengers well and can offer a level of personalised service that’s hard to match. We treat our travellers as we would like to be treated ourselves, with courtesy, understanding, where no question is too silly or request too small (or large). We also appreciate that you may not be able to discuss travel plans within working hours so offer a call back service at a time which suits you. As a result, we love welcoming back return travellers, many of whom have become friends.

Tailor – made travel

Although many of our trips are small group adventures with set departures, as a bespoke operator, we can design and create trips to suit any traveller, from solos to larger groups. If you’re unsure of what to see and do in a country, just ask!

Travelling with us offers a chance to visit places that few others have yet reached, pioneering destinations that may see less than a hundred visitors a year, where you’re likely to be as seen as a rather exotic visitor rather than just another tourist following the well trodden trail. This is travel at its most exciting, how it once was – breathtaking, new, intriguing and exhilarating. We know you’ll love it.