CRUISING off the beaten track is gaining appeal among travellers who tire of big ships with shopping malls and casinos, and prefer smaller, expedition-type vessels from which they can make landings in rigid inflatable boats.

The lure of some places, such as Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands, is their pristine, even fragile state, yet it seems that governments and cruise lines are beginning to work together. For example, Voyages of Discovery, the British cruise line, cuts its usual 650-capacity to 500 passengers when it cruises the Galapagos.

Its vessel, Discovery, includes on one trip a two-day visit to Easter Island with its mysterious Moai culture and towering statues. This is a different world, where a sign on a shop says “gone to church”. At the port, a rustic café serves fresh lobster at mouth-watering prices. Discovery is equipped for beach landings but high seas at some places occasionally make this impossible.

Discovery offers well-priced exploration cruises and a team of lecturers, including experts on the region such as Anthony Terry, a former British diplomat in Chile, is always aboard.

South America is the focus for many such trips. Hapag-Lloyd’s Hanseatic, which has an ice-hardened hull and is well-stabilised, unlike some of the Russian vessels that lurch across the fierce Drake Passage, runs five-star trips, with good food and cabins, albeit at a price.

One of its expeditions is up the Amazon from Belem. Passengers make frequent trips ashore to villages in rigid inflatable boats.

One of the most popular guides on the river, John Harwood, a British former botany professor at the university in Manaus, likes to go looking for caimans, small alligators, at night. A remarkable experience, particularly when one comes close.

Some fairly big cruise ships are able to navigate right up to Manaus, but smaller vessels such as the Hanseatic go beyond to Iquitos in Peru. Here the stilt houses are closer and tapirs and macaws are more likely to make an appearance. Bird life is everywhere and fireflies take over at night. Hapag-Lloyd’s fleet of ships includes Bremen, another expedition vessel, which has the distinction of having made a transit of the Northwest Passage.

The first view of the Tonle Pandaw is unforgettable, like a big, toy boat with a stubby bow, and the braced decks of a colonial steamer. Indeed the pedigree is just that, for similar vessels were cruising in Burma in 1865.

This was the year the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company was founded in Glasgow. It went on to open up the Irrawaddy with the biggest fleet of riverboats in the world, with many of its 650 vessels built on the Clyde, before all was lost in the Second World War.

Then, in 1995, a young Scot called Paul Strachan started adventure cruises on the Irrawaddy with a chartered vessel and, two years later, found the wreck of one of the original riverboats, the Pandaw. He had it restored and since then four replica vessels, all with 38 cabins, have been built, two of them cruising the Mekong River from Ho Chi Minh City to Siem Reap, gateway to Angkor.

The Mekong, wide at the start and a stream at the end, is full of life. Floating villages are everywhere, many with fish farms, the locals using longtailed boats. Bigger boats, many with families living on board, come and go, carrying timber, vegetables and cotton goods.

Phnom Penh is en route and most passengers stay in Siem Reap to visit the temples at Angkor. Many visitors precede the cruise with a visit to Vietnam. There is much to see in Ho Chi Minh City and a good base is the Renaissance Riverside in Saigon, as the city centre is still known. The Grand Hotel in Angkor, once a classic in Asia, has been restored and is run by the Singapore Raffles group.

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