India Himalaya trekking holiday
Typically you will be sharing your experiences with between 4-20 like minded travellers (depending on the trip, operator and how many others are booked on the trip) and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends its good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting new people as well as seeing new places.
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
On this trip we invite you to experience the essence of this amazing destination with its staggering diversity of cultures, flora, fauna and breathtaking landscapes whilst simultaneously minimising the negative effects such tourism can have.
Our Responsible Travel Guidebook
Our philosophy since 1975 has been to leave only footprints and take only photographs. To reiterate this, every customer who travels with us receives a copy of our award-winning Responsible Travel guidebook. This detailed book outlines our environmentally sustainable principles, and outlines how each customer can minimize their impact while travelling.
Global Warming and Carbon Balancing
The root cause of Global Warming is society's dependence on emission creating fossil fuel. Planting trees is not going to reverse this trend or cancel our carbon emissions very quickly or effectively. We believe the way to reduce these dependencies is to create clean energy production. Therefore, we support renewable energy projects like wind and solar power, and we are aligned with Climate Friendly, the gold standard setter in effective, meaningful action addressing climate change. So, while we believe that tree planting can play a small role in greenhouse gas abatement, we have gone the extra mile in promoting a longer term solution. Is this cheap? No. Is it responsible? Absolutely.
Community
With the help of our locally employed guides we endeavour to create the necessary circumstances to ensure we have a positive effect on the communities who welcome us warmly into their villages and most wonderfully often into their homes. By using local accommodation we are privileged to enjoy a special relationship and mutual understanding with our hosts and their environs.
In India we use private buses to ensure we do not take away seats and inflate the costs of these seats to locals as service providers realise they gain more by selling seats to tourists than to local people.
Wherever possible we contribute actively and financially to local community projects whether it be to extend the longevity of traditional customs, to preserve traditional ways of life, supporting education schemes or helping to develop environmental initiatives.
Local Staff Welfare
As well as paying our guides out of season, and an above-average take-home wage, our porter welfare supplement includes insurance, all meals on trek, appropriate clothing and accommodation for ALL our porters on all our treks. Their safety and comfort is as important to us as our customers.
No local payments policy
Local cash payments are becoming increasingly popular with many operators in the adventure travel industry. This policy seems to benefit the tour operators more than the local economies or the travellers, as it avoids local taxes and transfers the costs and risks of cash handling onto the travellers. In accordance with our Responsible Travel practices, we have chosen a policy of not asking for such payments.
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