A single question: Why always go on a 'tour'?

You have more adventures, make more discoveries and get a personal contact with other folks - even if you do not speak the language -.

My wife and I went to Jordan. The only place they did speak english was the hotel in Amman. We got lost a few times but every single time we met folks willing to help us. One we are still in touch despite the language. Google translate becomes a treasure of laughs too.

Tripod while traveling for pleasure? Heck no. I even leave my camera in the hotel main safe. - Don't trust the bedroom safe -.

Now if you travel for a job or for the pleasure of taking pictures? Make sure you have a wagon with you or coolies, I doubt your wife or friends will be thrilled carrying your stuff of being used as tripod...

Just saying.

If you take a travel tripod on a small group tour, given the pace of such tours, when do you have the opportunity to set up a tripod and take pictures? The tours I have been on with Overseas Adventure Travel (small groups not exceeding 16) keep you moving from early in the morning to after dinner. I barely have time to grab shots which I do while the guide is talking to the group and sometimes I have gotten so absorbed that the group has moved on and I don't know where they have gone. In those cases (which I try to minimize, not wanting to be a pariah), I just remain where I am so I can be found. (I also explain to the tour guide at the beginning of the tour that photography is my main interest so don't be insulted if I'm not listening to the lecture.)

You may ask why I don't go on photography tours and the reason is that I can't afford them. Even in those cases where it's just me and my wife and another couple who are friends touring (India, Burma, Iran), it imposes a burden on the non-photographers to go around setting up a tripod. I probably don't know what I'm doing, but on the rare occasions that I've bothered with a tripod (Induro C214 8X CF and RSS B40 head) when on a field trip with my camera club, it is a major pain to get the tripod at just the right height for the shot, especially since I've been warned not to use the center column because it reduces stability. It just takes a long time fooling with the legs.

We've never taken a bus tour, but we may need to as we age {as of last month I am now 70 years old}

I do own a tripod, but I hardly ever use it; my style of photography favors shutter speeds 1/250 or higher {I like unposed photographs including random people} and now my cameras have InBody Image Stabilization; our touring includes a lot of walking, and a tripod would just slow us down and add to the load I carry, so quite honestly I don't understand why someone would want to lug a tripod with them.

One of my bucket list trips would be to try to replicate a one-month tour to Australia and New Zealand (more then a year's net pay in my current job) but do it solo and taking at least twice as long to do it...maybe buy a used camper over there and sell it back when I'm done. I checked AirBNB and saw that I could save gobs of money each night over the hotels that I would be put up in on the tours. A visa can be used for up to 3 months at a time and know a few people in different states I could probably stay with (Perth and metro Melbourne) that I drove to Oshkosh from O'Hare and Midway over the past 5 yrs or so. At least they generally speak the same language over there although the terms can be quite different.