Southern India tour, Hampi & Badami

Planet

On our South India Tour, we make an effort to minimize our carbon footprint. We avoid taking a flight by using an overnight train. We also use local rikshaws on this trip. On some days the logistic requires us to use a private van.

We also provide reusable water bottles to each guest for the tour and encourage them to refill at hotel/Homestay/restaurant's filter water stations.

Online through our NGO's website, we offer merchandise products after the tour that represent an upcoming green and fair-trade movement in India. For example, we sell shirts from 'No Nasties', a t-shirt label that provides 100% fair-trade and 100% organic cotton t-shirts.

Additionally, our company uses 100% recycled paper for all our print products. This does not only include brochures, hand-outs and feedback forms but also envelopes and carry bags. We have recently transitioned from using paper feedback forms after our tours to an online form. Guests fill it out using their own electronic devices.

People

A key feature of our South India Tour is connecting with and understanding the local communities that you visit. Visiting a place with the intention of listening and learning is a key aspect of responsible travel in our opinion and we encourage and facilitate this as much as possible throughout the tour. We do this at several points throughout the tour, most notably, during our two days stay in Heranjalu.

We also, use small locally run accommodation during the whole trip, We also use local tour guides to support the locals.

We use 80% of the profits from this tour to support our NGO, Reality Gives. Currently, profits generated from the tours enable Reality Gives to run programs for the Dharavi (Mumbai) and Sanjay Colony (New Delhi) communities. Reality Gives is currently developing and testing several high-quality curricula and teacher training modules that we plan to make widely available for other NGOs to use. We plan to use resource sharing like this as a way to support local NGOs in a sustainable and helpful manner.

Reality Gives provides high-quality English, Computer and Life Skills classes/syllabus for vulnerable individuals, prominently young people. We also run a Teachers Training Course to ensure that not only we have the high-quality syllabus, but quality teachers (in India there is a shortfall of 600,000 teachers, and the present ones are not of good quality). In addition to this, we provide Community Centres as hubs for young people to express their creativity through a wide range of inspiring activities that children from low-income communities too often do not have access to (drama classes, dance classes, sport, for example). Our syllabi, as well as teachers training, will be available to other NGOs to use.

Since 2009, the profits from our tours have enabled Reality Gives to work with more than 8,000 young people from Dharavi and Sanjay Colony.