India tigers and temples tour

Planet

In India we (as with everywhere we go) we carefully choose accommodation, suppliers and transportation that either minimises their effect on the environment or that help to contribute to its sustainable development. By choosing small, privately owned accommodation where possible we also look to only stay in truly eco-lodges that abide by basic and also pioneering methods of ecological sustainability.

We are a member of Tour Operators for Tigers (TOFT) who run annual audits of the lodges and hotels around all Indian tiger parks and make sure that they adhere to Eco Tourism policies such as being environmentally friendly, employing local staff and buying local products. We also make sure that all the food consumed is produced locally. We also contribute and participate in as many studies that the local researchers and scientists are conducting as possible.

Wildlife Promise:

By bringing people here with a professional zoologist/naturalist as well as professional local guides we aim to showcase the environment in full but also to allow you to learn about the problems facing the ecosystems here and highlight the ways that continued development and human exploitation are affect the species and how cutting edge research is countering the problems as well as showing you examples of success stories. We also keep a record of all the great sightings we see on each tour and record the environmental factors, this data is used by ourselves but also given to the researchers who are working on many of these species. All the information collected in invaluable as the knowledge of some of the animals that live here are little understood. We also donate our pictures to the researchers to aid in their photo identification studies.

Our zoologist escort who is available on request is a tiger conservation expert and has his own charity (based in the Russian Far East) for the reforesting of deforested tiger habitat and raising awareness of the tiger plight here and also contributes direct to tiger research and conservation in India (as part of Tour Operators for Tigers (TOFT) and also in Russia.

People

As with any of our tours throughout Asia or elsewhere in the world we always employ local guides and drivers. They have a much better local knowledge and also helps to bring in revenue sources to the local community.

All of the hotels and lodges that we stay in make sure that all our resources such as food, drink and equipment is locally sourced. We also try and make sure that all the local guides that we hire and who work for the lodges, camps and guesthouses that we visit are from the local area. This is helped by our membership to Tour Operators for Tigers (TOFT) who annually audit the lodges to make sure that everyone adheres to eco tourism policies. We think that by employing local guides we have encouraging a future generation to follow this career.

Many of the accommodations that we use are involved in community based projects and schools in particular.

Many of the projects that are funded by people staying here are geared towards helping children in townships get better education and enhance their career opportunities in the future. We also encourage the purchasing of local handicrafts which are all created in a sustainable way and provide great unique souvenirs.