Reviewed 14 Oct 2004 by Claire and Paul Cowie
It's always the way when you know that you really should do something to highlight the good work that someone's doing; more mundane, and far worth while things get in your way. And so, I've been meaning to write for over a month now to let you all know how much we appreciated the link that Responsible Travel gave us to a small ecotourism company in China. We would never have found them without Responsible Travel - and it was the highlight of a trip to China, which was otherwise hot, humid, and at times hard work.
All of the arrangements were made beforehand with Lily - who couldn't have been more helpful sorting out a trip tailor-made to our requests. We asked them to arrange accommodation for the night we arrived, knowing that we would be flying to Lijiang in the evening. It was great to have someone meet us at Lijiang airport, settle us into the hotel and then to find us a good, local restaurant, and help us choose from the menu. There were a couple of downs - we weren't offered the opportunity to store some of our belongings so we walked with huge packs (our own fault too, we didn't ask), and on the second day the clouds came down and it was wet with poor visibility. But this was more than made up for by the help that was offered to us by the guides, translators, the villagers whose homes we stayed in, and those who cared for us at the Ecolodge. The scenery can be described as no less than stunning, the people who we stayed with and walked amongst were friendly, curious, and clear hard-working (making us on our holiday feel very privileged).
We would recommend to anyone, of any nationality, both the ecolodge and the ecotourism Company - and hope that we can find somewhere equally interesting again in the future -although given the distance we ended up flying to and around China, perhaps a bit closer to home.
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