This is a unique example of a responsible trip, the people in Sikkim have an inborn skill for trekking and due to Tourism now these sherpas - a local community - have now mastered in trekking. This not only has improved their quality of life but has also given a great boost to the local upliftment.
One of today's major environmental challenges is the protection of the biodiversity and ecotourism could well play a very important role in the protection. Specifically, it has raised the local living standard and made local people become more involved in conservation. Moreover, ecotourism could fulfil needs of people living in the places which attract tourists.
The salient features of this trip are:
- To promote business opportunities by generating income and job. The local community is very heavily benefited as when the tour moves it requires a lot of team like cook, porters, trekking guide, camping assistant and yak rider and so on. They are all very well paid for all this and the money goes straight to them.
- To reduce the negative impacts of tourism. When you are trekking you are leaving the minimum impact to the local area as you are on foot and the group is small in size. Secondly the Sikkim government also preserves these treks by not making them develop roads so that the area remains quite without vehicles and pollution.
- To conserve biological and cultural diversity. Sikkim government is paying a lot of attention to preserve this area and a lot of emphasis is given to maintain the forest cover. The beauty of Sikkim lies in its culture which is still in its original form as it use to be.
- To preserve the ecology from the fund thus generated. Tourism, especially trekking in Sikkim has become one of the main attractions thus increasing the state revenue which in turn helps the local govt to maintain its culture, ecology and its diversity. We try to shop and buy things from the local market helping in the economy. We generally buy handicraft and local artefacts for our guest to encourage their art and culture. Sometime we donate books to local school. Last but not the least we will donate £5 per person to the local orphanage school.
All the staff through out in all the accommodation are all local. There is a serious water problem in Darjeeling. The hotels which we are using in this trip are all doing rain water harvesting and use only CFL (energy saving lamps) waste is being utilized to use hot water boilers.
We follow very strict rules when we trek: we carry disposable bags to bring back the waste that we generate during trek. We don’t change our schedule trekking trail and we stick to our pre chalked out trail. We carry water with ourselves and boiled water is given during trekking to all our clients. We also have a printed format of our trekking rules for guests.
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