Rural tours to Turkey

Environment:
We are trying to do our best to protect all the natural beauty, ruins and natural environment and support local community. We are so sensitive about touching the monuments, ruins and structures because the acid that our hands excrete causes erosion to the structures. We give information about this to our guests and don’t let them touch structures or monuments etc.

All our guides are locals who are trained about the conservation of the natural environment and the local village people in the area. They inform our guests about how to protect this nature.

We also always warn our guests about not to take pictures with flash lights because the powerful light causes the discolouration of the structures. We all want our guests to be sensitive about protecting these legacies. Also on the way to villages, our guides give information to our guests about local people, their cultures and traditions.

We believe that local area accommodations minimise the waste of energy and water and we encourage our guests to save the water and energy at their accommodations and warn them to switch off the lights when they don't need it. Most of accommodations have solar panels.

We trek in the local areas, use tractors and similar village vehicles. These vehicles minimise the impacts to the air pollution. Also we try not to scare the wildlife and warn our guests about this. While minimising the impacts, our guests get chance to see the country. This helps us to save gas and our guests to discover the places. Our groups are minimum 4 people, maximum 20 people.

In our office we don't use our faxes and telephones unnecessarily. We make a point of giving the equipments that we don’t need in the office to the people who really need them. We encourage the staff to recycle and save water and electricity and not to waste papers.

Community:
The accommodations are all in the local areas, mostly in village houses. We encourage our guests to give the equipment that they don't need at the end of the tour to the village people.

We employ local staff as tour guides. The local people in the villages don't know English so we go to the villages with the guides who know the area well. We train the guides about the area and also we give information to the local village people about the tourists that will visit there.

The local people in the villages we visit, teach our guests how to cook local foods, show their culture, grain fields and show the guests around the fruit and vegetable gardens. Most importantly our local people teach our guests about their special folklore and their local dresses and always with a smile on their face. We pay the local people for their labour and always encourage travellers to buy souvenirs. Our guests generally love to buy local souvenirs to take home for a memory.

We aim to develop the economy of local places. We buy local produce such as hand made socks, gloves, carpets, scarves etc. Some regions are better for wooden products and other regions are better for farm products. We always encourage our guests to buy these kind of products from the local places and villages because these local products are cheaper and more natural than the products that are sold at the city centers.

We encourage our guests to eat in small local and family restaurants and provide them with information about where to find them and also local shops.

We are supporters of the poor and orphan children foundation. This foundation helps poor children to study and provides them what they need. We support this foundation every year. Also we encourage everyone around us to support these kind of foundations.

What makes this tour special and different is that we are visiting local places that have been never visited before by tourists, so the local people have a chance to introduce themselves, their cultures and traditions to our guests. All our staff respect the local people and the local environment.