Highlights of Indonesia small group tour

Planet

Travel is an opportunity to experience different cultures, meet new people, taste weird and wonderful foods and – for many – get close to local wildlife. We actively discourage our travellers from participating in any activities that exploit wild, domestic or working animals. In Bali, it’s fairly common to see “Kopi Luwak” or “civet coffee” being sold. Civets are small, nocturnal mammals, that are native to Bali and other parts of Asia. The coffee they help to create – by eating and excreting coffee beans, which are then collected and cleaned – has become increasingly popular. Sadly, this has encouraged a cruel trade and farming of these beautiful animals. All our leaders strongly discourage passengers from engaging in this trade, by not visiting farms or buying these coffee beans. We hope to encourage discussion and educate travellers about this sad trade whilst in Bali.

We work with local guides in Gunung Leuser National Park who are committed to the conservation of the wildlife. By visiting this area our passengers are supporting their work directly and contributing to the local economy. Our guides are proud of the national park and will endeavour to make sure our groups do not pollute or damage this fragile ecosystem.

Where possible our group leaders will always try and find a water refill station. This way our guests can top up and reuse plastic bottles, rather than purchasing new ones and contributing to problem of plastic wastage. We give all our travellers cloth bags too, so they don’t feel the need to use plastic ones.

We use suppliers that mirror our environmental values. We work with hotels and encourage them to implement sustainable practices and we remind our guests of how to do this themselves whilst on their trip (i.e. turning off the AC when not in their rooms and reusing towels).

People

We know where to find all things local. We support and recommend our neighbours, spreading the tourism income to those who need it most. We use local leaders and in Berastagi we also use local Batak guides who are indigenous to the area. We offer local people good working conditions, a fair wage and empower them through training opportunities. We eat local and shop local throughout this trip and encourage our travellers to purchase from multiple different vendors to ‘share the love’.

It’s part of our philosophy to act local too and that means respecting the local traditions, such as the wearing of modest clothing during the tour. Sumatra in general has a very conservative standard of dress and our passengers can be respected by the locals when following this. We recommend both men and women cover their knees by wearing long pants or a long skirt, and shoulders should also be covered at all times.

We also have a foundation that was set up to empower travellers to have a positive impact on the communities they visit. Our foundation now supports over 50 local, grassroots projects around the world. In the last 15 years, the foundation has distributed over AU $5 million to initiatives tackling areas like sustainable development, human rights, child protection, environmental conservation, wildlife protection, education and healthcare. We have a project in Indonesia called Bumi Sehat (bumi meaning Mother Earth and sahet meaning healthy). Bumi Sehat Foundation International works on the ground in communities in Indonesia and the rest of the world, building awareness, creating access to quality healthcare, and providing education, disaster relief and human services.