Biking holiday in Kenya & Tanzania

During this trip we visit a very small Maasai Pre-School under the shade of an acacia tree in Kenya. Our main goal of the visit is a mutual social exchange where children and bikers open their minds and learn more about the other’s way of life. Our bikers can also support the school by donating basic stationery if they like.

We camp with two different local families. As well as the fantastic social and cultural exchange experienced by visitors and locals alike, our visit also brings a regular income to the two communities (by paying for camping and other services).

In Tanzania we have a relationship with a Primary School in the Usambara Mountains. Again there is always a fantastic social and cultural exchange experienced by both the school pupils and our bikers. Over the past years money donated by our bikers has been used to employ local carpenters to build more than 100 much needed school desks for the school.

We are currently working on a project where we calculate the environmental cost of each of our biker’s air travel to East Africa. We then transfer this cost into trees and plant the trees in a local reforestation project on our biking journey. In addition to this for every trip we lead we will plant sufficient trees to offset the CO2 emissions of our support vehicle. We plan to initiate this project in 2008.

As a company we are committed to running our tours in a responsible manner as highlighted below:

• Small group size – Our groups really are small! With a maximum of 10 in any one group we minimize our impact on the small communities that we visit.
• Support local economies – buy locally made products, use local accommodations, restaurants, markets and support small businesses. (Buying locally made products also decreases the environmental cost of importing). We also employ local drivers and guides in the countries we visit.
• Encourage positive interaction and social exchange – again by supporting locally run businesses (and by travelling by bike!) we develop relationships with local communities and families on our trips where our clients from all over the world can meet and engage one to one with local folk; Also by learning the local languages.
• Educate our bikers – about the effects of buying products that come from endangered species, or products that are destructive to wildlife or the environment. We also like to think about – “What are the short and long term effects of aid/charity on local communities?”, “Who benefits?”
• Waste/rubbish management – when we travel we should treat our surrounding as we would treat our home (or better!). We do our best to avoid ‘single use packaging’ only using reusable or recyclable packaging. We recycle what can be, and manage any rubbish in the best possible way e.g. in Africa – all of our organic waste is feed to local domestic pigs and goats, and we always leave our campsites as we find them (or better!).
• Environmentally conscious office – To avoid paper waste we aim to use as much computer technology as possible in our office. We don’t have any mass production of hard copy advertising/brochures/flyers etc… and when we do use paper it is recycled!
• For every person who flies to join our trips we donate 10 trees to a reforestation project.