How to remove part of a url using htaccess - .htaccess

Question

I have looked at a good few similar questions on stack overflow but what I have tried doesn't seem to work.
'quotes' is a subfolder with a wordpress installation in it. So, the main root has a wordpress site in it and the 'quotes' subfolder also has a wordpress installation in it.
I have a path something like
https://example.com/quotes/uk/travel-packages
https://example.com/quotes/us/travel-packages
But I don't want 'quotes' to be in the url, it should just be
https://example.com/uk/travel-packages
I currently have this
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /example/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /example/index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^quotes/(.*)$ /$1 [L,NC,R]
RewriteRule ^uk/(.*) /quotes/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^us/(.*) /quotes/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
EDIT: I was trying this on my localhost hence the rewrite base being /example/ so I understand the confusion there now.
Here is the live server .htaccess file for both the root directory and the quotes subfolder in the root directory.
ROOT:
# BEGIN WordPress
# The directives (lines) between "BEGIN WordPress" and "END WordPress" are
# dynamically generated, and should only be modified via WordPress filters.
# Any changes to the directives between these markers will be overwritten.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
QUOTES SUBDIRECTORY
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /quotes/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /quotes/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Answer 1

If /quotes is a subdirectory that contains the WordPress installation and you have already removed /quotes from the URL in WordPress itself then you need to configure two .htaccess files:
One in the document root that internally rewrites (unconditionally) all requests to the /quotes subdirectory.
And another .htaccess file in the /quotes subdirectory that routes the request to WordPress - containing the "standard" WordPress front-controller.
In the (root) /.htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
# Internally rewrite all requests to WordPress subdirectory
RewriteRule ^ quotes%{REQUEST_URI} [L]
In the /quotes/.htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
# OPTIONAL...
# Redirect any direct requests for "/quotes/<anything>" back to root
# NB: WP itself *must* already be correctly configured to omit "/quotes" from the URL
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) /$1 [R=301,L]
# WordPress front-controller
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
The check against the REDIRECT_STATUS environment variable is to ensure only direct requests are redirected and not rewritten requests by the WP front-controller - which would otherwise cause a redirect loop.
Alternatively, you have just a single .htaccess file in the document root (and remove the .htaccess file in the /quotes - WordPress - subdirectory). For example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /quotes
# OPTIONAL...
# Redirect any direct requests for "/quotes/<anything>" back to root
# NB: WP itself *must* already be correctly configured to omit "/quotes" from the URL
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule ^quotes/(.*) /$1 [R=301,L]
# WordPress front-controller
RewriteRule ^quotes/index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
It seems from your question update that you also have a 2nd WordPress installation in the document root. It's not possible to have two separate WordPress installations and make them appear as a single WP site in the document root (ie. without specifying the subdirectory as part of the URL) unless there is some discernable difference in the URL structure between the two sites. Otherwise, you don't know which URLs should be routed to the WP installation in the subdirectory and which to the site in the document root.
Any with /us or /uk or any country extension in future should go to /quotes otherwise it should go to the route or whatever page is being called from the root site like for instance, https://example.com/contant-us should go to the root contact us page.
Yes, this is possible. For "any" country extension I assume a string of 2 lowercase letters a-z. Although this does mean that the WP site in the document root cannot have any URLs that start with a 2 letter path segment.
Ordinarily, you would modify the existing directives (as above). However, since this is WordPress, the directives in the # BEGIN WordPress code block should not be modified (unless you prevent WP from modifying this). Instead, we will just add some directives before the WP front-controller.
In the (root) /.htaccess file:
# Rewrite any URLs that contain a language code prefix to the subdirectory
RewriteRule ^[a-z]{2}/ quotes%{REQUEST_URI} [L]
# BEGIN WordPress
# : (Remainder of existing .htaccess file goes here)
In the /quotes/.htaccess file:
# OPTIONAL...
# Redirect any direct requests for "/quotes/<anything>" back to root
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) /$1 [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
# : (Remainder of existing .htaccess file goes here)
This assumes you will be accessing your static resources directly. eg. Using the /quotes subdirectory for resources that are contained within this site, so the /quotes subdirectory is not entirely hidden.
See my answer to part two of this question with regards to missing static resources (images, CSS and JS) for the second WordPress installation in the subdirectory that could result from implementing the above rewrites/redirects.
wordpress site missing images after htaccess change