Tibet & China biking holiday
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
It is important to us that when we travel to different parts of our amazing planet that our exchange is always a mutual one and that we make a positive contribution to people and places that we visit along the way.
These days ‘responsible travel' and ‘sustainability' are hot topics. Responsible travel is not about donating large sums of money to charity (at least not without thoroughly researching the long-term intentions or effects of the charity). We believe responsible travel is about taking time to think about how our actions can benefit or how they impact the people, communities, economies, environments and eco-systems we visit, and then use this to make a difference (or sometimes more appropriately - how we can NOT make a difference). We are constantly considering our actions and how we and the people who travel with us can improve our impact on the places we visit.
Here are just some of the ways that we ‘make a difference’:
- Social integration with the local people is a central part of our trips. Simply travelling by bike is a great start – a great way for our bikers and local people to meet and start a conversation.
- We always buy locally grown food and shop in small local markets; we support local businesses by staying in locally owned hotels, eating in local restaurants and taking our bikers to local operations and sanctuaries.
- Educate our bikers – about the effects of buying products that come from endangered species, or products that are destructive to wildlife or the environment.
- Waste/rubbish management – when we travel we should treat our surrounding as we would treat our home (or better!). We do our best to avoid ‘single use packaging’ only using reusable or recyclable packaging. We recycle what can be, and manage any rubbish in the best possible way.
- We have an environmentally conscious office – To avoid paper waste we aim to use as much computer technology as possible in our office. And when we do print we use paper from recycled sources!
- For every person who flies to join our trips we donate 10 trees to a local reforestation project.
- For every person who joins us on one of our longer multi-day trips we donate 10 trees to a local reforestation project.
- As China is a new destination for us in 2008 and we will be looking for a community or environmental project for our trip to support.
Community
Social integration with the local people is a central part of our trips. Simply travelling by bike is a great start – a great way for our bikers and local people to meet and start a conversation.
We buy locally grown and produced food as much as possible; we support local businesses by staying in locally owned guesthouses, eating in local restaurants and taking our bikers to local operations and parks.
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