Ladakh mountains trekking adventure

Planet

This tour travels through remote regions, rarely visited by tourists and we are passionate about maintaining their pristine nature. We work with the policy of ‘take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints’.

In other words, we ensure that we as a company leave these areas as we find them and as such we operate a strict no litter policies, taking all refuse to either be recycled or properly disposed of in nearby towns.

On this hiking adventure, we follow tracks carefully so as not to degrade the landscape, while enjoying stunning mountainous panoramic views.

This hiking adventure visits many of the incredible Tibetan monasteries and palaces and stops at local people’s homes in the region. A strong focus is local culture and different ethnic groups, and we meet many of these groups along the way.

We stay at local guesthouses to benefit the local people, and work closely with our guides and partners in Kashmir to ensure we contribute towards the development of environmentally sensitive tourism within this region.

In this region due to a sensitive climate, when it's time to harvest crops all able-bodied people in the region will come to help a particular farmer collect their harvest and look after their flocks before their harvest can be damaged by harsh weather. Our travellers get to learn about this pragmatic and community-based culture.

Finally, we are very proud to have partnered with Water-To-Go, specialists in personal and expedition water purification, instantly, and on-demand. Their unique, 350L water bottles incorporate advanced filtration technology to convert even the dirtiest water to drinking water as you fill up.

Being able to produce safe drinking water from sources off the beaten track, of sometimes dubious quality, offers incredible benefits to our adventure travellers and eliminates the need for single-use plastic bottles. We subsidise this product to make it more accessible to you.

People

We operate just one small group tour per year and throughout this exciting 9-day hiking adventure our clients will meet may different ethnic groups along the way. We try to ensure that local people benefit from our presence and as such we stay in locally run guesthouses, which provide employment for people from the remote communities we travel through, often in areas where little alternative for employment exists.

During our adventure we visit the HQ of established charity 17,000Ft Foundation, who work with remote local village schools to make improvements to infrastructure and teaching opportunities.

We feel that during our time in the country, it is important not just to understand the culture of the area, learnt through valuable input from our local guide, but also to learn about the obstacles that face these communities, for a more balanced view of what Ladakh daily life is really like.

A Not for Profit Organisation, 17000Ft was set up with a focus on improving the lives of people living in very remote villages, in areas that lie isolated and forgotten due to difficulties posed by tough terrain. All too often, young families move away to cities in search of education, leaving a vulnerable demographic in the remote mountain villages and having an effect on the culture and traditions of these areas.

17000ft’s vision is to strengthen rural schools and communities, drive attention to remote villages, and provide opportunities for learning through enriching exchanges with visiting travellers and creating a framework for economic independence through increase tourism spends. It is their strong belief that geography and distance should not prove a barrier to opportunity and growth.

We are invited as a group to learn about the work of the 17000 ft Foundation at their headquarters in Leh, where they will talk to us and show us a video of their work. Children are at school to learn, not for us to spectate, and so we are not visiting a local school during this adventure, but for the opportunity to contribute directly to one of their projects.

The Leh office visit during this adventure is entirely optional, but offers a unique opportunity to understand more about life off the beaten track in Ladakh, and a chance for us to reflect on what we can offer, be it a greater level of understanding, empathy and compassion, informing others of the realities that face young families in remote villages, or making a donation of time or money to the charity.

Any gifts we might offer are usually guided by the village - and often it is small items such as notebooks and pencils, chalk and art materials, or balls and skipping ropes. The only unsanctioned gifts, as such, are usually little fun items like bouncy balls or yoyos to engage activity in the villages where we stay.

We believe that this kind of interactive tourism helps both our travellers and the regions we visit. The locals gain financially, and our travellers learn more with the unique experience and social interaction.

Similarly we visit many Tibetan Monasteries where strong codes of behaviour and Buddhist principals exists so it is important that our clients know how to behave properly. Our guides are fully respectful of this and impart their knowledge to our travellers so as not to offend the local culture and customs.

There is a large Tibetan community in the region with many Tibetan Monasteries, many who fled after the invasion of China. Our group visit many of these Monasteries on a daily basis where they get the opportunity to make a donation to the upkeep of the Monasteries themselves and their cultural and religious traditions

We encourage our travellers to support families and communities and spend their money with local businesses through the purchasing of locally sourced goods and souvenirs. Throughout this adventure our travellers eat in local restaurants or have their food prepared by local chefs in the communities.