The company is offering five departures of its signature small-group tour to Central Asia, “Journey through Central Asia: The Five ‘Stans,” which sold out last year, and is featuring a new 20-day trip along the Silk Road called “Once Forbidden Lands of Central Asia and Iran,” with stops in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Other new small-group tours include “China’s Silk Road & Tibet: Route of Monks & Merchants,” an 18-day exploration of the Tibetan Plateau and Western China that includes a ride on the incredible high-altitude train from Lhasa down to Lanzhou as well as visits to the UNESCO-listed Mogao caves in Dunhuang and the fabulous Kashgar Sunday Market; and “Eastern Turkey & Georgia: Legacy of Empire,” a 15-day in-depth escorted journey which begins among the folded hills of out-of-the-way Anatolia, rich with the traces of early civilizations, featuring visits to Akhtamar Island in Lake Van and Trabzon’s cliff-hanging Sumela Monastery before continuing along the balmy Black Sea Coast to the unfamiliar little country of Georgia, where guests are welcomed at tables laden with some of the finest food and wine on earth.

The company continues to feature its Flexible Essential Private offerings, with compact, well-designed independent itineraries to St. Petersburg, Russia, Siberia, the Silk Road, Mongolia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, China, Tibet, the Baltics and Central Europe. Other popular catalog trips include nine different ways to ride the famed Trans-Siberian Railway, as well as a new private train tour to the Arctic Circle and back. MIR’s 25th anniversary catalog is available by downloading it online or by contacting by email or toll-free.