Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
We provide all travellers with reusable bags and chopsticks in order to avoid waste and use of “tea flasks” for drinking water (or tea, like the locals do!) so as not to purchase multiple plastic bottles. Safe drinking water available in all our accommodation and transport. Any bottles that are purchased are given to the community of waste collectors who rely on this for an income.
-All suppliers issued with RT recommendations in their local language and leaders and groups act as “ambassadors” for spreading the RT message beyond just our travellers but also trying to involve the local tourism industry.
Food left over after group meals is collected and boxed up to be left where homeless/street people might easily find it and take it without them having to go through garbage for a meal.
We include informal local language lessons to give our travellers a head start into understanding the culture and communicating with the people we meet along the way.
At the end of out journey we encourage our travellers to donate unwanted clothes, toiletries or other goods which we then distribute to local organisations
Our tour leaders are all Chinese locals.
While travelling in China we encourage all our travellers to learn of and show respect for cultural differences. Our small groups and using a variety of local transport enables travellers to experience cultures at first hand, offering greater opportunity for cross-cultural understanding. This can mean anything from public bus, trolley bus, tram or subway. We also have the opportunity to explore on bikes and on foot and travel overland on all our basix trips. When taking trains we travel 2nd or 3rd class (hard sleeper) which is the way the majority of locals travel - this gives us maximum chance to meet and share stories, food, games and the journey with local travellers.
There are a number of basic ways in which we try to minimise our impact such as implementing waste reduction practices. Reusing plastic bags, water bottles and using our own set of chopsticks (instead of disposable ones). We use guides from the local areas we visit, in Yangshou many of our guides are from farming families in the surrounding areas and our business creates many benefits for people of the area.
In China we supports Beijing Huiling and Xi'an Huiling - community-based, non-profit organizations that care for and provide life-skills training for mentally disabled young people. They also support the Spring Bud Plan, a public service organized by the China Children and Teenagers' Fund that assists girls of poor areas of China to return to school.
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
