East Timor cultural tour

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION

On this trip to East Timor, we aim to minimise our environmental impact while also highlighting the importance of the natural landscapes and environments we travel in. We spend time in national parks and sacred areas to the Timorese like Jaco Island which remains uninhabited by humans and is left to nature. We ensure that our travelers are aware of negative impacts of tourism to these parts of East Timor and are confident that we minimise our impact on wildlife and the environment.

In conjunction with our local team we work with hotels and guesthouses to implement best practices when it comes to environmental matters – in some places this may be behind what we might be used to in other parts of the world. This includes basic things like not replacing towels each day, as well as saving electricity and turning lights off – small things but attitudes in East Timor are often not as developed in terms of environmental protection as they are in the west.

Where meals are provided, most ingredients are locally grown and sourced, which not only reduces the pollution involved with importing food, but it also helps out local farmers and merchants who sell fruit, vegetables, meat and more.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

We operate a strict no litter policy on our tours, and work to educate our drivers and other service providers so as to avoid contributing to this problem. We always make sure to take all litter with us, disposing of it responsibly in big cities and towns and mustn’t leave cigarette butts either. If purchasing any snacks, we encourage our travelers to avoid excess packaging. Likewise, if we see any rubbish, we pick it up when possible.

In our UK office, we aim to reduce our carbon footprint by opting to share information online via our website or through email rather than printing out documents and posting them to our travelers.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY

We always try to ensure that local people benefit from our presence. On this tour we employ the services of local guides, boatmen and drivers; all of whom will be supporting extended families, and for whom such income is important in an area where opportunities to earn money are limited. We pay our service providers fairly. Not only are they able to offer greater insights and a more intimate connection with the place, but this helps to ensure that some of the income generated by our visit filters back to local communities rather than just being funnelled to centralised institutions. This also helps to show local communities that there is a financial benefit for them in preserving the natural environment.

Where possible we encourage our travelers to spend their money with local businesses; for this reason we do not include meals where it is feasible to eat outside of the hotels, in order that local restaurants are able to benefit from the presence of tourism, rather than the income being channelled just to the hotel.

On all of tours we strive to include a strong focus on local communities and we are firm believers that tourism should have a positive impact on the places visited. On this tour we try to allow our travelers to gain a real insight into the traditional customs of the country; some good examples of this is the interesting markets and villages of East Timor we visit and stay in. Not only is this a great experience for travelers but it means that small scale community-based tourism projects, often ignored by mainstream tourism, are able to benefit from our visit. To improve the lives of the locals, we also stay in guesthouses in more traditional and culturally rich areas often run by families – similar to homestays – which means all of the money goes to the owners of these guesthouses and their families, helping the area stay out of poverty while our travelers also get a real taste of how the people of East Timor live.

As with many of the trips that we offer, this tour has a strong focus on local culture and different ethnic groups. Where possible we try to ensure that local people benefit from our presence. We spend time with traditional ethnic groups in their villages and towns on this trip in Com and in the sacred areas of the Fataluku people, among others. Tourism rarely reaches here and we recognise that we have a special responsibility to ensure that the encounters that we have are carried out in a responsible manner. We ensure that our presence here is very much welcomed – we feel that it is very important to be seen as guests here rather than outsiders come to merely look. We are able to spend time with the communities learning about their traditions and customs.