There are few places on Earth where Eddy Downpatrick hasn’t been, or isn’t planning to go soon, from the hidden lakes of Patagonia to the tiny Kingdom of Lo in the Nepal Himalayas, to the transcontinental boreal forest, south of the Arctic tundra. He’s been dreaming about that Arctic trip for a while, and plans to return home to the U.K. by working his way south through Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole.

“It would involve a little bit of a zigzag, but I couldn’t miss out Svalbard, or Greenland, which I’d like to cross using a mixture of kayak and kite ski, which is kind of terrifying,” Downpatrick says over an ice coffee on a hot summer day in London. Although the café we are sitting at is just a short walk from Kensington Palace, the leafy neighborhood now seems a little dull and suburban compared to the ones on Downpatrick’s past and future itineraries.

Downpatrick has already tried kite skiing in Switzerland and is eager to feel the wind in his sails again. “You’re going along quite happily with a kite pulling you along. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a gust that shoots you down. If you land on snow, you’re very lucky, but most of the time you’re landing on ice — with a big crack,” he says with a smile.

Downpatrick, the eldest grandson of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and a member of the extended royal family, is the latest in a long line of British adventurers who’ve hopped on ships to circumnavigate the globe, scaled the world’s highest mountains or walked across Europe to Asia with nothing but a backpack, and perhaps a book of poetry.

He is living his dreams, but Downpatrick also wants others to join him on his jaunts around the globe. The founder of Aristeia Travel, Downpatrick specializes in taking small groups — mostly Americans — to places that are often difficult to access or off-limits to the general public. He works his connections — and his passion for history, geography and literature — to organize trips for travelers looking for a challenge, be it physical or intellectual.

Even the company’s name transmits a sense of adventure. Downpatrick, who studied ancient Greek and Latin at Eton, and who has a degree in modern languages, specifically French and German, from Oxford, said he was inspired by Homer’s “Iliad,” the epic poem that recounts an episode in the final months of the Trojan War.

This may be the year of “The Odyssey,” courtesy of Christopher Nolan, but Downpatrick prefers the prequel. “Homer applies the term ‘aristeia’ to his heroes on the battlefield. It refers to a culmination of victories, or a series of excellent or glorious deeds,” says Downpatrick, whose boyish looks and exuberance belie his 37 years.  

Although Downpatrick prefers the tale of war, the multimillion-dollar adventures he organizes for large and small groups of clients are nonviolent, although they do come with some jeopardy.

There was the time when he was with a group on Annapurna, one of the highest mountains in the Himalayas, and the world. They were gazing at the sky and mountain peaks, and listening to “the rockslides and avalanches going off all around us. It was amazing,” he says. But then the weather turned, the clouds descended and a member of the group fell ill and needed medication right away.

It was terrifying. The helicopter had difficulty reaching them, Downpatrick didn’t have his satellite phone, the Wi-Fi cables in the camp below had been damaged due to an avalanche and there was no way to communicate with emergency services. On his way down the slope to find help, he started to suffer from hypoxia.

He eventually got the person in his group to safety, but then had to recover himself. He did it by resting, drinking liquids and watching “Lawrence of Arabia,” another tale of a British adventurer in distress, which he’d downloaded onto his laptop.

Downpatrick has loved hair-raising adventures since he was a boy. His parents, George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, and Sylvana Tomaselli, the Countess of St Andrews, “knew I always wanted to be outside, no matter the weather. The worse it was, the better. I had this quite romantic idea of myself as a sort of warrior-adventurer,” says Downpatrick, whose formal title is Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick.

His mother called it a “white knight complex. She always said I liked to seek out situations where there was a rescue, or something very noble to do, and then launch myself into it with abandon and with abject disregard for my personal well-being. She’s not been wrong,” he says, adding that it may be the result of a childhood spent at boarding school where kids had to rely on their wits to survive.

“From the age of 8, you were forced to become independent. Quite frankly, it was a little bit ‘Lord of the Flies,’ a little bit ‘Fight Club.’ School felt feral and tribal, although today it’s different because there are safeguards,” he says. 

Downpatrick isn’t always defying death, and many of the trips he organizes for Aristeia are culturally enriching journeys. He’s taken groups to the Palace of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, Bavaria, and to the nearby Historische Wurstkuchl, which was founded in the 12th century and is Europe’s oldest restaurant.

He’s also traveled with clients — some of whom have become close friends — to the ancient Kingdom of Lo, an ethnic Tibetan enclave in Nepal, now known as Mustang. (That area was not impacted by the devastating August floods that killed more than 1,000 people, with others still missing).

“It’s one of the last places on this planet where you can see Tibetan culture as it was,” he says, describing the walled capital city of Lo Manthang, centuries-old Buddhist monasteries, caves in the cliffs where the residents would hide from bandits, and the royal palace. His group stayed at the Royal Mustang Resort, which is run by the former kingdom’s crown prince Jigme Bista. “He was so friendly, serving us whisky and beer from behind the bar,” Downpatrick says.

Closer to home, he’s taken his groups to Holkham Hall, the stately home in Norfolk where the author and socialite Lady Glenconner grew up. Downpatrick believes Holkham has “the best private library in the country, and one of the best in Europe.” He’s also taken them to see the vast art and sculpture collections at Houghton Hall, home of David Cholmondeley, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, and to stay at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool, which belongs to the Earl and Countess of Derby.

Downpatrick says he enjoys “letting people behind the curtain, and allowing them to see elements of history that they would not get from a television series, or even from reading an extensive biography of these [aristocratic] families. It’s the face-to-face contact, the meetings, the intimacy that generates the memories.”

Louise Marie Cortezi, who has been on many Aristeia trips in Europe and Africa says, “Eddy will always escort you to one fantastical chapter after another. His passion for the planet, the magic of nature and the undeniable connection we have, as people, to the wonders of the world is unlike anyone I have met.”

Most of his clients are American, and that’s no accident. He’s fond of them — and the feeling is mutual.

“Americans, more than any people I’ve come across, are fascinated by the world that came before the existence of their own country. They have a curiosity, an open-mindedness and also a straightforwardness. A connection to the old world still means something to a lot of Americans, and there are many institutions here that could not survive without their patronage,” he says.

Downpatrick has much more planned, including a trip to New Zealand. He’ll take his travelers to meet Māori leaders, helicopter to a glacier in Fiordland, and go boating, hiking and wine tasting. On the way, they plan to swing by the Brando, the private island eco-resort in French Polynesia named for the star of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” Marlon Brando. On the way back, they’re stopping to explore the Cook Islands.

Downpatrick says it’s a privilege to open these windows on the world, and that his greatest satisfaction is the wonder — and sometimes disbelief — he sees in the eyes of his clients. It could happen anytime — when they’re helicoptering over the Dolomites or the Himalayas, or discovering a Patagonian lake with ultra-pure water.

“You can see their eyes begin to glisten, and they look at you as they realize everything you [talked about] and promised to show them is real,” he says. And then he has to dash. The world awaits.