Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
We provide all travellers with reusable bags and chopsticks in order to avoid waste and encourage 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.
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.
All suppliers issued with RT recommendations in their local language and leaders and groups acting as “ambassadors” for spreading the RT message beyond just our travellers but also trying to involve the local tourism industry.
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.
Wherever possible we take local transport in China. 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 journet with local travellers.
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.
On this trip You'll be immersed in the rich cultural heritage of Central Asia and make plenty of local friends on this overland journey from Beijing to Tashkent.
A highlight for all our travelers is the focus on meeting and staying with local people along the way. You'll stay in a yurt, the traditional Kyrgyz felt tent dwelling for the night just after you cross the border into Kyrgyzstan before continuing on to the village of Kochkor where we stay with women from the local felt making coop. Fatima and her mother will no doubt treat us to a great meal with many toasts of koumiss (mares milk) and if you are staying at Kuku's house you might even get to sleep in her backyard yurt!
There are a number of community projects in Central Asia that we are involved in. In Bishkek we sponsor two babushkas (elderly ladies) through the Babushka Adoption Foundation. You'll be able to take Valentina and Valentina out for dinner, something that they rarely get to experience since they have no family left in Bishkek to take care of them. Our sponsorship gives them a supplement to their tiny monthly pensions so they can have enough for food and medicine.
In Bukhara we have dinner at the home of Mavluda, the director of Bright Beam Women's Crisis Centre. She'll tell us all about the great work that they do defending and educating about women's rights, something that is quite a challenge in Uzbekistan. You'll probably have the opportunity to try her great home made plov, the country's national dish.
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!
