Why we do this, and how we do it differently.
Spirit Quest Tours has been sharing transformative sacred journeys since 2001 — to Egypt, Peru, Bali, Turkey, Bhutan, Morocco, and beyond. Small groups. Private access. Guides who know the doors that don't appear on maps.
We've spent years building the relationships that matter. A sunrise meditation inside the King's Chamber. The Osirion at Abydos, opened for our group when it's closed to everyone else. Joining the local Balinese in a ceremony on the island temple of Tanah Lot, as the surf crashes around you, and the tourists watch from the far shore.
You can't buy that access the week before departure.
The people who join a Spirit Quest are not passive tourists. They are curious, open, and willing to be moved — writers, healers, architects, teachers, scientists, seekers of all kinds. They arrive as strangers. They share meals at ancient sites, witness ceremonies together, sit in silence in places that ask something of you. By the end of a journey, they are something closer to family. Many return trip after trip. Many become lifelong friends with the people they met on their first one. The community that has formed around Spirit Quest over twenty-five years is, in many ways, the journey's most enduring destination.
Five-star hotels. Private boats. Restaurants chosen for the food. The right conditions make transformation more, not less, likely. Everything is arranged before you arrive.
Our Philosophy
Excite the mind.
Pamper the spirit
Challenge the body
Inflame the soul
Meet Our Founder
Greg made his first journey to Egypt in the late 1990s, not entirely sure what he was looking for. He came back changed — not in any way he could easily explain at a dinner party, but changed in the way that quietly reorganizes everything afterward. He started Spirit Quest Tours in 2001 because he wanted to go back. He figured other people might want to come. That was the whole plan. Over twenty years later, the plan is essentially unchanged.
What has changed is the depth of access. Two decades of returning to the same sacred sites, building the same relationships, learning which doors open and when — that's not something you replicate in a season or two. Greg leads most departures personally. On the ones he doesn't, he handpicks who does.
His background is unusual for a spiritual travel guide. He's a technologist, a speaker, a filmmaker, an inventor, and a writer. He presented at the grand opening of the Alexandria Library in Egypt for the UNESCO World Heritage in the Digital Age conference, introducing Imagine Places: Distributed Telepresence Installations for Creating Immersive Historical Reconstructions — a paper on merging ancient wisdom with technology. His writing appears in Modern Alchemists from the Land of the Pharaohs alongside Nicki Scully, John Anthony West, and Normandi Ellis. He has lectured at Cambridge University, San Francisco State, USC Cinema-Television School, and the University of Sofia.
All of that informs how he designs a journey. But when he's leading a Spirit Quest, the only job is yours: show up open.
A Partnership Built on the Road
BILLY KOCH: TRIP DESIGNER
Greg and Billy met several years ago and recognized immediately what experienced travelers sometimes recognize in each other — a shared way of moving through the world. Billy had already built Green Llama Travel and established himself as an accomplished guide and trip designer with deep roots in Peru. Greg had spent years taking groups to Egypt and Bali. The instinct to collaborate was immediate.
They planned their first journey to Peru together, watched Covid erase it, and waited. Last year they finally launched it. The trip delivered everything they had spent years imagining it would.
Peru is now a permanent part of the Spirit Quest calendar, and Billy leads every departure that Greg doesn't. But Peru is just the beginning. The two are already deep in planning for Turkey 2027, and conversations are underway about Southeast Asia and beyond. What started as a shared vision for one journey has become something closer to a creative partnership — two guides with different roots and the same instinct for what makes a journey matter.
Game knows game
Our People
KEEPERS OF THE SECRET PLACES
Every Spirit Quest journey depends on a network of relationships that Greg has spent two decades building — and that can't be replicated from a travel desk.
Some are guides. Emil was born on the grounds of Luxor Temple — the sacred site is literally his home, and he moves through it accordingly. Jawad is a practicing Sufi with deep roots in the spiritual community of Fez, one of the oldest centers of Islamic mysticism in the world. In Bali, Yanta holds the role of pamangku — a lay priest responsible for temple ceremony and community ritual.
But the network extends far beyond guides. Temple guardians who open doors before visiting hours. Archaeologists who share what the textbooks don't yet say. Shamans and healers who work with our groups in settings that require years of trust to access. A chef in Morocco who cooks the way his grandmother did. Boat captains on the Nile who know when to slow down and say nothing. Local families who open their homes.
These aren't vendor relationships. They're friendships, built visit by visit, season by season. They are the reason a Spirit Quest goes places — literally and otherwise — that other tours don't reach.
