How Extreme is Xtreme?

We believe that if you are brave enough to push your comfort zone and try something different, something out of the ordinary then you are an Xtreme Gapper!

That could be getting in the water to learn to dive for the first time, or learning to surf your first wave. For some that may not seem extreme, but for others catching the first wave will be one of their proudest moments. That is exactly what we are about.

Making you feel proud!

Sure we have some really Xtreme stuff, like bungee jumping and Skydiving (check out our Adrenaline Tours!) but we also offer plenty of activities that will get those endorphins rushing around with out pushing up your travel insurance premium! Talk to us about  what you think you can handle, and we will be happy to give you some suggestions!

We are not just for people on a gap year...

We are not just for people on a gap year...Oh no. Some of the Xtreme Gap programmes last 60 seconds, some 2 weeks. We call them adrenaline shots, so if you are looking for a short break adventure holiday, we are here for you too.  Feel free to check our some of our real gap reviews from real customers to discover how much you could achieve on a gap year with Xtreme Gap.

Xtreme Gap Year are experts in exciting gap year adventure travel and unique gap year projects abroad. Established in 2008 after discovering there was a real gap between value for money and current offerings in the gap year industry, and a questionable culture of bad ethics in the industry.

Xtreme Gap customers are:

Traditional Gap Year takers on gap year projects Twenty somethings looking for an adventure break. People in their thirties really looking to do some exciting travel or change their career!   Anyone else? Occassionally, we once had an enquiry from a 60 year old, he wanted to go shark cage diving. The point being anyone can apply. It is not an age, it is a mindset.

What makes our Gap year programmes different?

Google Gap Year and you will be inundated with tempting gap year programmes, promising you "life changing trips" and telling you can make a difference on your gap year. While it is certainly true that there are lots of cool Gap year ideas out there, many companies will offer your similar experiences. Gap Year Volunteering is especially championed by many of the big players out there, but not by us and here is why.

Really Exciting Gap Year Programmes

Absolutely no bunny cuddling projects, although we do have a programme where you can pick up panda poo in China (we feature that particular programme to show you how ridiculous some gap year programmes can be “ and no we have never sold one of these trips (but others have check out the  i-to-i Panda conservation video on google: It is really is that exciting...)
Nothing marketed as ethical travel in our opinion these are often by words for (high profit and zero fun). Our gap year programmes have a real focus on adventure, adrenaline and having a great laugh abroad.
Many of our programmes you need some serious guts to do, making  you a super human being if you travel with us (with the exception of you pooper scoopers out there).

No Volunteering

Please allow us a quick rant here, we promise we will be quick...ish. Perhaps not, but this point is really important to us. So bear with us. Ahem... We hear many stories of people on their gap year choosing to undertake some volunteering options as part of their year out. The big companies will tell you  can make a difference and that they are championing the plight of developing countries by offering man hours from their volunteers. The fact is, offering a voluntary project is highly profitable area for many of these companies as they can get away with charging high amounts for programmes that keep you occupied for many weeks, relying on the charities and Ngo´s they work with sourcing you cheap or free accommodation, often in very basic conditions. They get away with this because if you really have a desire to help out, you will go for it; it takes advantage of your good will. Very little of the money you pay will then go back to the organisation you choose to volunteer with. Being a gap year organisation, we do get requests from organisations to "sell" their projects, as we have a no volunteering policy we have to turn them down, but because they approach us we know the profit margins some of our competitors are making. For instance Turtle conservation projects in Costa Rica costing $150 and being sold for 900 pounds. We feel profiteering from gap year takers good will is highly unethical and we will never be a party to it. Now that said, there are some programmes on the site that have volunteering style elements to them. These have been vetted by us and do not represent the above style projects.  What they do represent is more of a cultural exchange type programme or a volunteering programme with wildlife conservation. We don´t believe you will change the world by going on these trips, but you might just learn about other cultures in developing countries.

Why do we have it in for Volunteers?

We don´t. We think it is very special if you want to spend you gap year doing something for somebody else, just please, go with an appropriate organisation (start with V.S.O. or voluntary service overseas) and avoid any one that is gap Year Volunteering specific, especially if they are charging you for the privilege.
On another note if you are going to volunteer, find an organisation that will train you to deliver a needed skill while you are away, not just send you somewhere to teach English.
Rant over.

We are a small company looking out for your best interests.

A brief glance of our website site may cause you to lump us in with the other companies out there offering gap year programmes. Please don´t be tempted to think we are all the same. Xtreme Gap Year was set up in 2008 by 2 people, Debby Neeskens from the Netherlands and Oliver Bray from the UK. One of the founding principles of setting up the company was to break the industries rip off practices. If you want to know more about what we are referring to, don´t take it from us, read about it in the Sunday times article posted on our blog. Just google mind the gap year, or check our blog for press.

 We have come a long way from our extremely basic first gap year website offering Xtreme Gap Year experiences in Thailand and South Africa, and we have undoubtedly pissed off some of the competitors in the gap year industry who do not want you to be aware of what they are up to.

The fact is we are not out to make a fast buck, we believe strongly in the gap year programmes we promote and we always make sure we are great value for money.

We do not run call centres.

Many gap year companies sprung up years ago, they probably started out small just like us, but the landscape for the gap year industry has definitely changed recently. The bigger (more profitable) companies like i-to-i and Real Gap were successfully bought out by Tui in 2009. According to some press reports i-to-i was bought for 14 million pounds and Real Gap for 17 million. Can you imagine how much money they must have been making for a big holiday and travel organisation to part with that much cash? Think about that before you are tempted to book through others, after all they have share holders and fat cat salaries to take care off. Where do you think their best interests lie?  In true travel agent style, they are expensive offices and employ lots of people to hammer the phones selling you their trips; these are expensive which justifiably explains why they publicly site marketing costs as a reason for charging somewhat higher premiums for some trips.

We do not run call centres, and never will. We might remain small, but that just what we are about, looking out for the little guy.

We focus on really cool gap year trips abroad that benefit you personally.
Our main focus for selling gap year trips is to concentrate of cool trips abroad that will benefit you personally. That could be through discovering new cultures, taking part in some cool gap year sports or activities

Serious Fun.

Because we are a small company run by a small management team, we take care and effort in checking out the programmes we run, and make sure that they live up to expectations in that they are seriously good fun! This often means that the directors are travelling to the various  gap year destinations (and if you want to read more about these research trips, you can check out our gap year blog, as we often document our trips on there.) to make sure that you will be getting exactly what you are expecting after you book.

Anyone can join not just people on a gap year

People often ask us if they are too old to take a gap year with us. We tell them that it does not necessarily matter how old you are, but more what your personal expectations are. It is true that some gap year programmes do tend to focus on school leavers, and if someone not fitting that age group would feel a little out of place if they joined, but certainly not all. Many of our programmes are ideally suited to people who have a few more years behind them, if in doubt just ask. People who have travelled on their gap year with us have ranged from 18 years old to 55! (So if you think your Grand Pa is up for a bit of MMA Cage fighting in Thailand, let him know!). Lots of people of different nationalities join to, although predominately (with us) it is people from the UK and Netherlands (We are a Dutch Gap Year Company). However people from Spain, Dubai, The USA, Germany, and France have all joined.

Why do you need to take a gap year?

Do you need to take a gap year? It is a legitimate question, as it is certainly more difficult to take a gap year these days that it used to be. With stories in the press about universities putting the squeeze on gap year takers, by reducing the number of differed entries, coupled with the fact that University fees are now well and truly in place, it is little wonder that people can be put of taking a gap year altogether. If you are questioning whether you need to take a gap year, consider the following:

• Gap years taken before university do not have to be for the entire year and can give you a years work experience before you go and hit the books.
• Gap Years might seem like an expensive option, but remember you have several months year to work and save up the funds. If you are considering your gap year and you still live at home, there are very few times in life when you can save up a decent amount of disposable income (to blow on a gap year) so rapidly. No mortgage or rent commitments.
• There really is no better time in life that before university to take a gap year, this is because after you graduate, you will probably have a sizeable amount of student debt to manage, and a trip away may seem a little bit too frivolous.
• We believe that a gap year can provide you a lot of personally beneficial experiences that you can take with you to your next stage in life. For instance finding new social skills and learning how to deal with unusual situations abroad is all part of the experience.
• Some day or later means never. If you really have a desire to take a gap year, but then decide to put it off until later, real life will get in the way. We have seen this to be true time and time again. If you are really thinking about taking a gap year, then the likely hood is the best time to take a gap year is now!

Do you need to take a gap year? No not really, no one needs to take a gap year, no one needs to do anything, but you will find it beneficial, fun and exciting. If you take a gap year with us you might just find that it was the best thing you ever did.

Gap Years and Adrenaline Travel

What is the Adrenaline Travel concept? In a nutshell Adrenaline travel is all about having exciting experiences that you just can´t have at home. It is when you have butterflies in your stomach because you are about to do something so exciting, it scares you. Out of the ordinary cool stuff that makes your anus twitch. Things that will make your Mum go: Oh no you don´t, not under my roof (don´t worry, you will probably find that she ends up wanting to join you on your trip).
Simply put adrenaline travel gap year programmes make the most of your time away, because they are genuinely different, exciting experiences set in suitably cool locations all over the world.
If you want to visit a country or a region and make the most of it, keep your eyes open for our adrenaline tours on the site.

Adrenaline Tours

Taking a gap year gives you a once in a lifetime opportunity to do some thing amazing. The things that you just can´t do at home and are likely to never forget. To Xtreme Gappers this means really exciting stuff, activities and adventures that get the butterflies going and gives you very sweaty palms. We are not talking about bunny cuddling volunteering  projects in Africa, or picking up Panda poo in China, we mean real adventures that really test your metal – the things that push your comfort zone and make you face your fear.

Call it a right of passage or character building stuff – we call it adrenaline travel and to the hundreds of Xtreme Gappers that come back having achieved what they though impossible, it can be truly life changing. It´s not all bungee jumping and skydiving, although these are considered by many as must do experiences, for some it can be daunting to go scuba diving for the first time, swim with a Whaleshark in Thailand or learn to surf their first wave off Australia´s beautiful beaches.
These types of activities help develop you personally – because it is the personal challenge that you alone have to overcome and it is that kind of self reliance that helps you grow and develop at university. We don´t subscribe to the notion that any gap year activities look good on a CV, but we do genuinely believe that they can change your out look and develop your character for the better, and that alone helps with any interview situation.

There are certain destinations that really deliver when it comes to this style of travel, namely South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and these in these great destinations, we run Xtreme Gap Year Adrenaline Tours. These are not all about the activities either, they are hand picked  incredible destinations, offering adventure, beautiful landscapes and good social backpacking scene with people from all over the world – just what all good travel should be about, not just UK gappers together on one project.

For those of you tempted to embark on a thrill seeking adventure, please take heed of a word of advice from the people who make these adventures happen- plan it all and be sure to book before you go. Plenty of people ignore this advice and wait until they are travelling, reading on internet forums how easy it is to organise when you are there, whilst this is true – you can get organised in country  the vast majority of these people then miss out and blow the opportunity of a lifetime. Why? The answer is simple. They run out of money. These activities are expensive – a sky dive cost £200 and last one minute.  What we do at Xtreme Gap Year is enable you to do all the stuff that you really don´t want to miss out on. Why? Because if you wait until you are out in the country, you will find that there are alot of costs associated with travelling – especially if you are a first time traveller and you are not really used to budgeting, which is obviously very important.

With an adrenaline tour ticket in your back pocket you know that you will be doing some amazing things on your gap year, and that you do not have to worry about finding a bed for the night or how you will be planning on getting around the country. With that piece of mind, you then know that all your spending  money is free to do things you want to do or blow behind the bars, guilt free because you know that a round is not going to cost you an activity you will be telling your grandkids about. If you are really fortunate too, you might even get a loan off the bank of mum and dad to help fund the adrenaline tour and subsequently all the really cool stuff you can do!

So in summary, if you are planning on taking a gap year, make sure you plan where you want to go and what you want to do, and remember if you are unsure as to what you really want to do, you can always chat to us at Xtreme Gap, because we have been away and researched the trips, and had a wicked laugh in the process! Taking a gap year is your time to shine, it probably the biggest opportunity you will have in life to see the world, so make it count!

We also do other Gap Year Stuff

We also provide other gap year stuff too, from gap year sports, wildlife conservation, gap year diving, qualifications and custom made round the world trips, arrival packages and bolt ons to assist you plan your perfect trip.

Where can you find our gap year reviews?

We publish our real Gap Year reviews on our blog. Don´t just take our word for it; read about the experiences others have had when they have travelled with us.

We also publish blogs and videos about our research trips to make your trips better.

How have other people benefited from our Gap years

Some have discovered themselves, some have improved their fitness, some have gone on to become tribal leaders on small tropical islands revered as gods and worshipped by villagers. Some have been arrested. Some have lost weight (especially the ones who contracted dysentery). Many have become qualified to do extremely cool things like diving and kite surfing. Some have seen the best sunset in their life, some have made new friends (well most there was one guy who was just so unpleasant he never made any), one person in particular never went back home. Some discovered their hidden talents; many discovered they did not have any. All of them had a great time, yes even the ones with dysentery.

When people want exciting gap years here is what they do.

With a host of gap year companies pushing "life changing" travel it can be tricky to know who can provide you with really exciting trips. Just remember, we are a small company that properly research the trips, publish our research journals, not a company that resells trips out of brochures. If you want to go with a company that has been to the destinations and done the activities you are interested in, then join us on one of our gap year trips.

1. Log on to our site (You are reading this so that is the first step)
2. Look though all the alternatives by country or by activity (the small search by box) at the top of the page will help.
3.Request trip notes on the programme page (we have lots of information on the site, but plenty more if you ask for it
4. Join our Facebook group and meet others looking to do the same.
5. Book online by filling out the booking form at we will contact you within 24 hours.

Who Travels with Xtreme Gap Year

All sorts of people come away with us. All ages all nationalities. However this does not mean you will all be suitable to join. You have to have a love of excitement, and a genuine curiosity to experience cool stuff abroad. Do you have to be fit? Sometimes, but not always, besides we have plenty of options for you if you want to get fit too.

People travel with us for different reasons too.

Some people want to change their routine, day to day life has become a little too boring for them, some people need to get out of their environment for health and social reasons, they have fallen in with the wrong crowd and it is dragging them down and making them lazy. Some just want to do something seriously exciting with a mate, and a standard "TUI" holiday just isn´t going to cut it (did we mention Real Gap & I-to-I are owned by TUI )
Others... travel with us because they can´t get enough of poorly fitting T-shirts and fake watches in Bangkok. Some people love the idea of experiencing the butt gun in Thailand after a hot curry. Whatever your reason, tell us about it on our face book page.

How Flexible is Xtreme Gap Year when it comes to planning your trips?

We pride ourselves on being very flexible when it comes to planning your gap year. Because we are a small company we are rather good at it too. Once again don´t just take our word for it, check our reviews.

We are flexible because we have people stationed on the ground in various different countries working for Xtreme Gap Year. We are flexible because we have been out and visited the in country partners and can actually tell you first hand what is possible.

We can also upgrade (and downgrade for the cheapos) accommodation and other aspects of the trip. We have put together lots of custom made round the world trips, gap years and short holidays, tweaked and tailored to fit the needs of the customer. Nothing to big (or too small for that matter). Of course there is a limit, sometimes we have to say no, we can´t do that. Like when one person wanted a tattoo from a Yakuza Gang, and another who wanted to try out the world´s smallest parachute (the size of a bed sheet if you must know). Sometimes people get greedy, and we have to let them down gently that it is not technically possible to be in 2 places at once, but where ever possible, if it is possible, we will stop at nothing until we have sent you off on your perfect gap year trip.

Can blow up a cow in Vietnam with a Bazooka?

Apparently so. But not with us.

Why should you Travel with Xtreme Gap Year

What apart from the fact we are a smaller business that gives a hoot about your trips, we don´t profiteer off our customers and volunteer projects (read this Sunday Times Article) and our trips are genuinely exciting? Because we don´t do this for free you know. I mean someone has to come up with these ridiculous ideas like learning to dive with Tiger Sharks. Yes Tiger Sharks or getting stick whipped by crazy Filipinos. How Can we help you Achieve the perfect Gap Year Search where you want to go What you want to do Request Trip Notes If you want us to tailor make your trip we can

Gap Year Myths Busted...

One thing is for sure when you a planning a gap year there will be plenty of advice heading your way from all sides. There will be good advice and bad, only you can decide what is the right path for you to follow, but here are some of the more commonly found shady misnomers out there.

People will tell you to do something constructive

Do not waste your time on your gap year, do something constructive is often the line delivered by tutors. Many are told if you just go off and travel for a year the universities will not take you seriously. For some reason, teachers and concerned guardians (who have not taken a gap year themselves or probably applied to a university in the same way as you would today) completely agree with the benefits of a volunteering style gap year. Do not be mislead, this is completely incorrect, and extremely counter productive to you getting the most out of your gap year.

Quite frankly you deserve more

Lets just think about this here. You have been in education since you were five years old give or take. Don´t you think you deserve some time off to enjoy yourself a little? I mean come on, do not just sign up to a gap year program because you are told to do something constructive. In our humble opinion, actually spending time away doing something really fun, something you will enjoy doing, is far more constructive than being confined to a gap year volunteer project which you are participating in because you were advised to do something the looks good on your CV. You have just spend the majority of your life hitting the books, and now, you have the chance to take one year, to properly enjoy yourself.  We advise that you do just that, so that you do not have any regrets and you can properly concentrate on university or career after your gap year.

A constructive Gap Year volunteering project looks great on your CV and will help you get a job.

Wrong. But it does not look bad either. Despite what your read on the internet, participating in a gap year project does not greatly improve your chances of getting a job. In fact the people that tell you it will, largely work for gap year companies – (well in fairness it probably worked for them), and have a vested interest in telling you that it does. We are a gap year company, and we are telling you that a year out will not necessarily help. Why? Because we are not all about the money and duping people into doing things they will not enjoy, because they have been misinformed .

Should our opinion matter?

Not really, it is your life and only you can decide what to do with your year off, and whether you believe us is up to you, but considering the one of the directors of Xtreme gap was a recruiter for hundreds of companies for 8 years, who interviewed well over 3000 job seekers, reviewed many many more CV´s and placed many hundreds of people in jobs, the majority of whom had not taken a gap year, we are pretty informed on the subject. At no point in the 8 years of recruiting, did a gap year listed on a CV help further the job hunting prospects of his candidates. Where a gap year can help with job prospects is with social and interpersonal skills, helping you to deal with people – such as in an interview situation or if there was practical work experience gained on a working holiday visa in Australia or New Zealand for example, or with qualifications (see our qualifications section above)that enable you to start a career of get a job working with people.

What is constructive anyway?

Well we believe that travel and all the situations, challenges, good time and not so comfortable times is indeed character building! Travel will give you life experience. There is probably no better way to learn about the world, and the people in it, and how to develop your people skills and interpersonal skills than by going out into the world and exploring. Learning to haggle the price down over some dodgy Tshirt in the Khao San Road, is  a far more practical way of practising a business negotiation, than learning about it in a book in the university library.

Life is supposed to be enjoyable you know...

So are gap years. Which is why we are passionate about supporting projects and running trips that are fun. We know if you are having a good time, you will not be missing home, and the life experience and exciting moments will do the rest.

Volunteers end up joining projects in a half hearted way

Seriously. If you are thinking about what program to join, and tempted to work in an orphanage in Cambodia due to parental pressure:  please, please, don’t. These Kids need 100% commitment and people who genuinely want to help. We know people who have signed up for these style of projects to find that the other participants on the programs are only attending because they feel pressure from parents and tutors to do something constructive.  They end up going out, getting hammered and trying to construct a social life instead of helping out. It is much better to do something that you want to do, after all you deserve it.

Gap Year projects should help local communities and your assistance is needed.

Wrong. Nice idea in principal but lets look at this in more detail.

• Firstly: If you sign up to a project like this you will pay a large fee to a UK Organisation who will set you up with a placement on an overseas project. (The vast majority of that fee, which tends to be pretty high) will not go direct to the overseas partners and therefore back into the community.
• Secondly, you are most likely not trained properly to participate in any really needy projects, like construction, teaching or healthcare. You may question why companies selling these projects do not invest some of the money you have payed them (or overpayed them) back into training their customers to actually deliver some good.
• Thirdly, and this is the really bad part: in some cases you might actually be doing more harm than good.  By participating in a project and offering your assistance through a paid organisation, you are taking away the potential job of a local.

Why do we believe this? Here is an example...

Oliver, one of the directors of Xtreme Gap, took a gap year to Africa to teach English in Tanzania. Aged 18, with zero training in how to teach he was placed in a secondary school in a remote village near Mount Kilimanjaro. 60 African students in one classroom, many of whom, where just a few years younger than him. Not only did it turn out he could not teach them properly (Swahili was not his strong point, and trying to explain the complexities of English Grammar was not easy when the students did not speak English).  To make a bad situation worse, he discovered during the course of the project that a local Tanzanian teacher had been fired to make space for a free English teacher, so that the school did not have to pay the salary of the local teacher. Disgusting. This was actually published by the Sunday times newspaper to highlight some of the pitfalls of choosing a gap year company. The company that sent Oliver was called World Challenge by the way.

Yeah...but I speak English so I can teach it. Easy?

Can you? Can you explain to some one what a modal verb is? How about a composite adjective? Now do it in another language other than English. Not that easy really.  Teaching English is not just about reading aloud from books, if you are working in a school, you need to follow a syllabus, and quite often you can find it to be quite complex. An please do not think an online TEFL course will help either, these cost £200 and essentially are 95% profit for the gap year companies that promote them. They are in our opinion a false blanket of security and not adequate to teach.

We speak from our own experiences and others...

Please note however passionately we feel about this, there are exceptions and nothing is ever clear cut. If you want to volunteer and help out on a local project, please do not let us put you off the idea – we just do not believe you should pay for it. Find a local organisation that does not charge you to volunteer and make sure you will not be doing more harm than good. Xtreme Gap Year Director Debby volunteered in an Orphanage in Chile. She did not pay through a gap year organisation. The experience for her was extremely worthwhile, but was not cheap either. She raised several thousand Euros (much of it though her own means and through donations from friends and family)  to help buy much needed equipment for the Orphanage.

All 200 of the kids there got a new pair of shoes, and they got a new refrigerator for the Kitchen for the same money that would have been spent on paying a fee to a gap year company.

(Why do you pay a fee then? Well the shareholders of the main gap year companies, parent company: TUI need to receive dividends, they have overheads to pay).
As you can tell we are not a big fan of TUI, not only for the above reasons, but also because they Managing Director of Real Gap (owned by TUI)  has contacted some of our mutual partners overseas issuing ultimatums for them to stop working with Xtreme Gap Year or Real Gap would with draw their support for these organisations. Why? Because they like to apply supplier pressure on organisations: some of which are volunteering organisations, also because they probably do not like us either for exposing the hypocrisy and questionable ethics behind some gap year companies business ethics.

These organisation then feel obliged to tow the line as they receive hundreds of Volunteers from Real Gap and then leave themselves at the mercy of one gap year agent. We know of volunteer organisations that have be dropped overnight and many that received constant pressure to lower their prices to increase the profit margins for volunteer programmes. Pretty ethnically questionable we feel, so we do not mind exposing it here. If you feel the same, spread the word.