Annapurna Sanctuary trekking vacation

Planet

Charity Partnerships: As a company we support The Travel Foundation, a UK charity that has been established to promote responsible travel practises throughout the whole of the travel industry. We also work with a number of charity partners who work in the destinations that we visit; including Friends of Conservation and Born Free Foundation. We partner with many small grassroots projects throughout the destinations that we visit - they all share our responsible vision.

Our Foundation: We’ve highlighted a few of the ways in which we offer our support, financially or otherwise, and now you can, too. We have set up our own foundation, which will administer funds donated by you. A small donation of £1 per person will be taken when booking a vacation, we then double this amount and that money will be put to good use by one of our carefully selected projects. If you don’t want to make the donation, just tell us when you book.

As a company we aim to contribute to the environmental preservation of the destinations we visit and to reduce any negative impacts our operations may have. This translates to actions such as using local transport where safe to do so in order to reduce emissions, observing all national and marine park visitor rules and operating a ‘take in, take back out’ waste management system, to name but a few examples. Through our inhouse foundation we also invest money into environmental initiatives that benefit the planet, including restoring kelp forests to help reverse the effects of global warming and protecting endangered species such as sea turtles and elephants.

People

Our Responsible Travel Code: Being Responsible is at the heart of everything our company does - full details of our code can be found on our website. The local supplier for this trip will promote our responsible travel code throughout your adventure. You will also receive specific information on this trip’s responsibility in your trip notes.

The very ethos of our style of travel is responsible; small groups on fully escorted tours, experiencing the very best of a region, a culture and a landscape, with a friendly local hand guiding the way. Our itineraries are designed to give our travelers real life experiences without compromising the part of the world through which we are journeying, this is our commitment as a global tour operator.

As a company, our responsibilities don’t stop when our tours end. We run and support a variety of projects globally, from healthcare, education, human rights, child welfare, sustainable development and environmental and wildlife protection. Our own in house foundation has been in operation for over 11 years; a not-for-profit fund that has distributed over AU$3 million to more than 70 non-government organisations since 2002. Donations come from our travelers and are then matched by us dollar for dollar.

On this trip: We work hand in hand with a local Nepalese owned agency, who employs on our behalf, group leaders, sirdars, porters etc - and whom without our employment would be living a subsistence living as hill farmers. Our local Nepalese owned agency employs responsible working practices throughout their operations. This includes a porter welfare policy to limit the load each porter to carries to 25kg, to pay a fair wage so porters can equip themselves properly and to use the same pool of porters offering them further training opportunities to become guides and more if they wish.