We provide all travelers with reusable bags and chopsticks in order to avoid waste and encourage use of “tea flasks” for drinking water (or tea, like the locals do!) so as not to purchase multiple plastic bottles. Safe drinking water available in all our accommodation and transport. Any bottles that are purchased are given to the community of waste collectors who rely on this for an income.
Food left over after group meals is collected and boxed up to be left where homeless/street people might easily find it and take it without them having to go through garbage for a meal.
All suppliers issued with RT recommendations in their local language and leaders and groups acting as “ambassadors” for spreading the RT message beyond just our travelers but also trying to involve the local tourism industry.
We include informal local language lessons to give our travelers a head start into understanding the culture and communicating with the people we meet along the way.
Wherever possible we take local transport in China and Russia. This can mean anything from public bus, trolley bus, tram or subway. When taking trains we travel 2nd or 3rd class (hard sleeper in China, kupe or platzkart in Russia) which is the way the majority of locals travel - this gives us maximum chance to meet and share stories, food, games and the journey with local travelers.
At the end of out journey we encourage our travelers to donate unwanted clothes, toiletries or other goods which we then distribute to local organisations.
Our tour leaders are all Chinese or Russian locals.
This trip is an epic journey traversing 3 national and through areas that area rarely visited by tourists. In particular this trip exposes the outer reaches of rural Mongolia, as well as the grandness of the huge cities of Beijing, Moscow and St Petersburg.
In Mongolia the itinerary takes in the grassland wilderness of the beautiful Terelj National Park . The group stays in a traditional Ger camp, where they can experience the lives of nomadic families. The gers sleep up to 4 people with comfy beds and plenty of blankets. In the colder months you might want to stoke up the wood heater in the centre of the ger and you'll be toasty warm in no time! Horse riding is also an option here, and is a great way of learning more about the local people's lives.
This company started in 1989 with a passion to get travelers off the beaten track. It was started by best friends who wanted to develop a style of travel that was all together different; wanting travelers to become a part of a country - and not just tourists looking in. Wanting them to have fun, meet people, learn things, explore, and do stuff they could never do at home, to travel by anything and everything, and stay anywhere and everywhere! Fast forward two decades and they now travel to more than 110 countries and offers over 800 itineraries however their philosophy on travel is unchanged. Their core purpose is to enrich people's lives by creating unique, interactive travel experiences. Providing fun, affordable and sustainable travel adventures that are beneficial to local communities.
We invite every traveler who books a vacation via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the vacations they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same vacation can have different views!
