culture quest world tour

C ulture Q uest

Emmy nominated series on pbs that explores life through the lens of the world's artists, artisans and keepers of culture..

Join our team by donating to the cause!

We fund this series ourselves through all variety of means, one major way  is from donors like you. Culture Quest is a 501c3 non-profit, so anything you can give is tax deductible and will go a long way to help keep us out in the world telling people 's stories!

Click on the donate button below., enter donation amount, click "Donate with PayPal" and that will take you to the  paypal site where you will  have the option to use your paypal account or debit/credit card.

Use one of the services below to sign in to PBS:

You've just tried to add this video to My List . But first, we need you to sign in to PBS using one of the services below.

You've just tried to add this show to My List . But first, we need you to sign in to PBS using one of the services below.

• Sign in with Google
• Sign in with Facebook
• Sign in with Apple

By creating an account, you acknowledge that PBS may share your information with our member stations and our respective service providers, and that you have read and understand the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

Get extended access to 1600+ episodes, binge watch your favorite shows, and stream anytime - online or in the PBS app.

• Become a Member

Already a OPB member?

You may have an unactivated OPB Passport member benefit. Check to see .

You have the maximum of 100 videos in My List.

We can remove the first video in the list to add this one.

You have the maximum of 100 shows in My List.

We can remove the first show in the list to add this one.

Culture Quest

Culture Quest is a series that looks at life through the lens of the world’s artists. More More

Culture Quest is a series that looks at life through the lens of the world’s artists, artisans and keepers of culture. It’s through that lens that we not only look at the day-to-day struggles and successes of the individual people we are spending time with, but also look at the larger issues that are affecting the places they call home.

Collections

More culture shows.

Culture Quest Tours

Similar Experiences

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Culture Quest Tours - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

A Flexible Itinerary

Your private tour group, more visits than views, flexible free trips ratio, guaranteed departures, and there's more.

See Who Tours With Us!

15 S. 3rd St., Ste. 200, Phila., PA 19106 | toll free: 800.678.6877 | phone: 215.923.1415 | fax: 215.923.1146 | [email protected] © 2024 Culture Quest Tours. All rights reserved.

Where Brilliance Belongs

CultureQuest® for fame and glory

CultureQuest might be considered a trivia game or competition, but its intent has always been to promote and test cultural literacy. Facing questions that range from film to politics, from literature to geography, from music to history and further afield, Mensan teams of up to five members gather in their neighborhoods on a single day across the U.S. and Canada and, for 90 minutes, compete for cash prizes and cultural literacy bragging rights. Evolving from a simple trivia competition in 1990 between one region’s Local Groups, CQ is now truly the quest for cash prizes and bragging rights. With a rich history of volunteerism, it promotes and tests cultural literacy with a side order of fun.

Mensans T.J. Lundeen and Becky O'Neal founded CultureQuest as a competition between Region 6 Local Groups in 1990. After some success at a leadership weekend, and with the support of then-RVC Carol Hilson , the quest grew to have almost every group in Region 6 participate during the second year, and two teams of Board members were also invited to participate. In 1992, the competition went national; in 1997, teams from Mensa Canada participated. CultureQuest: The Next Generation began supporting youth teams in 1999.

Don't miss out on your chance to be part of the CultureQuest experience! Now in its 35th year, CultureQuest is the ultimate competition to test your cultural literacy and have a little fun while you're at it. Gather up your team and face the competition - you won't regret it! Deadline to register is March 31.

• Youth Program
• Wharton Online

Culture Immersion With Culture Quest at The Lauder Institute

Just for fun! Lauder Culture Quest is an Amazing Race -style program that enables students to vote each year on a quest location and travel in teams to explore a different region of the world. Culture Quest was spearheaded by now-alumni Davis Smith, WG’11, G’11, and Greg Mitchell, WG’11, G’11, along with Lauder’s former director, Mauro Guillén. The first Culture Quest took place in May 2011 in Central America, and we have been exploring interesting locales ever since!

As a noncredit-bearing part of the Lauder experience, LCQ is now offered in late December/early January, before the spring semester begins. Students seeking an optional hands-on activity can join in the fun by “competing” in this 10-day international immersion experience, which is organized by the Institute in collaboration with a student committee.

Culture Quest is for students seeking an adventure as well as unique way to experience multiple foreign cultures in a short period of time.

Experience Counts

Every year, upwards of 50 Lauder students, their partners, and occasionally alumni, race through a region of the world in teams of four or five, scoring points along the way for engaging in activities from interviewing government officials to attending a wedding to learning an indigenous musical instrument to advising small businesses. The more teams interact with local residents and discover the culture firsthand, the higher their score.

Learning en Route

While Culture Quest does not bear academic credit, it is a phenomenal learning experience. In the past, quests have been organized around a theme relevant to the region in which the activity was set. (For example, the Vienna-to-Istanbul trek’s theme was “The Orient Express.”) In addition to the hands-on learning involved in the experience itself, readings and lectures chosen by Lauder faculty on the region’s history, current events, and business climate tie into the Lauder curriculum. Moreover, Lauder students make an effort to connect with Lauder alumni in their travels, inviting them to lecture or take the group on a tour of their own companies.

Rules of the Road

Whichever region or country serves as the backdrop, participants are given a starting point and a destination and told they may travel any way they can – except by air. The rest is up to them.

The Destination

To reach the finish line, some teams have traveled through as many countries as there are days in Culture Quest. Every team has a different approach to earning points, but they all come away with a nuanced understanding of the regions they’ve visited, as well as strengthened leadership and interpersonal skills.

10 days of Culture Quest

See photos and learn about past treks.

2023: Philippines

2022: Ghana and Ivory Coast

2021: Egypt

2019: Sri Lanka

2018: Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Guyana

2017: Playa del Carmen, Mexico to Antigua, Guatemala

2016: East Africa including Rwanda to Uganda and Kenya

2015: India to Bhutan

2014: Gdansk, Poland to St. Petersburg, Russia

2013: Vienna, Austria to Istanbul, Turkey 

2012: Johannesburg to Cape Town, South Africa 

2011: Tikal, Guatemala to Panama City, Panama

In the News

Here’s a snippet about the India to Bhutan Quest in the fall 2015 issue of Proudly Penn.

Read “ Lost and Found on an International Vision Quest ” from the Fall 2013 issue of Wharton Magazine, which captures the Orient Express Culture Quest race from Vienna to Istanbul.

Giving to the Lauder Institute Campus Map Lauder Institute Alumni Association Lauder Institute Inside Class of 2026 Admit Portal

The Joseph H. Lauder Institute 256 South 37th street 2nd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19104-6330

Eight passengers stranded on African island after Norwegian cruise ship left without them

A dream cruise vacation has turned into a nightmare for eight passengers left stranded on the African island of São Tomé and Príncipe after their ship left without them because they were late to return from a private tour.

The tourists — six from the U.S. and two from Australia — were aboard the Norwegian Dawn, a Norwegian cruise line ship , which departed from Cape Town, South Africa, on March 20 for a 21-day voyage up the coast of Africa set to end in Barcelona, Spain, on April 10.

But on Wednesday, the group of eight tourists was late to return to the ship by more than an hour for the all-aboard time of 3 p.m. from a private excursion on the island, which was not organized by the cruise line.

Jay and Jill Campbell of South Carolina were part of the group that was left behind.

They said that their tour’s operator notified the cruise captain that they were going to be late to rejoin the ship and that the local Coast Guard tried to get them on the vessel but that they weren’t allowed to board.

As a result, the couple and the rest of the group have been stranded for days on the island off Nigeria, grappling with language, currency issues and complicated travel to catch up with the ship.

“The lovely people of São Tomé were very gracious, very hospitable. They had reached out as much as they could to help us find hotels,” Jay Campbell said on NBC's "TODAY" show Tuesday morning.

“We were able to get to a tour agency there to arrange flights to the next port of call. ... Very difficult process — you’re dealing with multiple languages, language barriers, you’re dealing with different currencies ... finding someone that even has dollars ... trying to get an agent to understand where we need to get to.

"It’s one of those ‘You can’t get there from here,’" he added.

A Norwegian spokesperson called the incident a “very unfortunate situation” and said, “Guests are responsible for ensuring they return to the ship at the published time.”

The cruise line said that after the guests failed to return, their passports were delivered to local port agents, in line with protocol. The company said it was working with local authorities to understand “the requirements and visas needed for the guests to reboard the ship at the next available port of call.”

On Monday, the guests had made arrangements to rejoin the ship in Banjul, Gambia, but the ship was unable to safely dock there because of “adverse weather conditions” and “tidal restrictions,” Norwegian said. The guests were then contacted and provided with information to rejoin the ship at Dakar, Senegal, on Tuesday. 

Jill Campbell said they traveled through seven countries in 48 hours to arrive in Senegal on Monday night.

But the couple was reconsidering whether they even wanted to return to the cruise.

"We are considering whether or not we are going to board the ship. It is in dock here in Senegal," she said. "We believe there was a basic duty of care that they had forgotten about, so it does concern us."

"After what we witnessed, we truly believe that although there’s a set of rules or policies that the ship may have followed, they followed those rules too rigidly. I believe that they really forgot that they are people working in the hospitality industry and really the safety and well-being of the customers should be their first priority," she added.

Ultimately, the eight passengers did rejoin the cruise before 8:30 a.m. ET Tuesday in Dakar, Senegal, Norwegian told NBC News in an e-mail Tuesday evening, after this story originally published.

Norwegian said the passengers were responsible for making their own travel arrangements to rejoin the ship.

"Despite the series of unfortunate events outside of our control, we will be reimbursing these eight guests for their travel costs from Banjur, Gambia to Dakar, Senegal," a cruise line spokesperson said in a statement. "We remain in communication with the guests and are providing additional information as it becomes available."

A silver lining of the catastrophe was that the Campbells were able to connect with another Norwegian Dawn passenger — Julia Lenkoff, 80 — who was also left on the island, but for a medical reason.

Lenkoff was on a different day tour Wednesday. She had "medically disembarked" from the cruise to seek local treatment on that day, Norwegian said.

Norwegian said that its care team tried to call Lenkoff several times and was unable to reach her and that it worked with its port agent in São Tomé and Príncipe for updates on her health.

The Campbells met Lenkoff and were able to put her in contact with her family in California, who flew her home — a move Lenkoff's daughter said "saved her life."

"She's a world traveler. She travels all the time. So this was going to be one of her bucket list trips, because she's been to 120 countries so far, and she wanted to get to 130," her daughter, Lana Lenkoff Geis, said in an interview that aired Tuesday on "TODAY."

Norwegian said Lenkoff was escorted on a flight to Lisbon, Portugal, then put in the care of airport staff members to continue her journey back to the U.S., where she has safely returned.

Breaking News Reporter