Nepal small group tour






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Single Supplement from £295, ask for details.
Description of Nepal small group tour
This Nepal small group tour follows a carefully crafted itinerary that enables you to experience not only Nepal’s spectacular Himalayan scenery but also remote village life, Himalayan wildlife a and traditional towns of Pokhara and Bandipur.
Starting and ending in Kathmandu, we explore this charismatic city on a guided walking tour, in particular its Old City, temples and Buddhist architecture. Our next stop is the magnificent Chitwan National Park, famous for having bred the rhino back from extinction and where you will get a real jungle wildlife watching experience. While at the park we include a jungle walk, river canoe trip, and either an elephant or jeep safari, as well as a village walk and early morning bird watching walk.
Our next stop is the ancient Newari hilltop town of Bandipur. The centre of Bandipur has been restored and, as well as being a wonderful place to just hang out and take in Nepalese life, it has great mountain views. There are options here to hike down to Siddha Cave or take a more gentle walk around rural communities.
The lakeside town of Pokhara is next on our itinerary, famous for its stunning setting with the Annapurna range as backdrop. We spend plenty of time here so that you can take on one of many outdoor activities on offer, on the water or heading around it, or just chilling out and taking in the magnificence of it all.
We head back to the Kathmandu valley next and enjoy a night in the hilltop village of Nagarkot from which you may have a chance to see Mount Everest, weather conditions depending. Just 12km east of Kathmandu our final stop is in Bhaktapur to see its wonderful blend of monuments and temples, followed by more sacred sites at Pasupatinath temple and Boudhanath stupa en route back to Kathmandu.
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Reviews
1 Reviews of Nepal small group tour
Reviewed on 29 Nov 2017 by Allison Bucknell
1. What was the most memorable or exciting part of your holiday?
The day at Chitwan National Park - canoe ride and jungle walk and the airplane ride over Everest
2. What tips would you give other travellers booking this holiday?
This is quite a gruelling trip, not much time for relaxation so don't expect to come back refreshed!!
3. Did you feel that your holiday benefited local people, reduced environmental impacts or supported conservation?
We certainly contributed to the local economy through use of local guides and non-chain hotels. We tried as far as possible to eat local food. Not sure that we made any contribution whatsoever to reducing environmental impacts - there was a lot of travelling and the pollution levels in parts of Nepal was staggering.
4. Finally, how would you rate your holiday overall?
There was an interesting programme and I do feel as though we got to see a lot of different aspects of Nepal. However there was just too much travelling over roads that are no longer suitable for long distance travelling.
Read the operator's response here:
Thank you for getting back to us with your feedback via Responsible Travel and also via email. This is very much appreciated and allows us to better understand what we are doing well and where we still have room for improvement.
I’m really pleased to see that you were able to rate this tour 4-star, felt that it did benefit the local community, and that as mentioned in your email, you felt the organisation of the holiday was first class and that you enjoyed the tour.
Unfortunately as you have noted, like much of South Asia, Nepal, and Kathmandu in particular, does have an ongoing struggle with pollution and litter. The main road into the Kathmandu Valley does become congested by the large trucks travelling to and from India which have no alternative route to Kathmandu. We use as little of this road as possible, but without making the drive to Chitwan hugely longer, some use of it is unavoidable. To avoid the long drives we do offer the option of taking internal flight upgrades on some routes, like the one you added between Pokhara and Kathmandu. However, this doesn’t actually reduce pollution or emissions at all, and in fact increases your impact. This is because our car/minivan/minibus would still need to drive the full loop anyway (Kathmandu/Chitwan/Pokhara/Kathmandu) as some legs are not possible by flight, and the only suitable vehicles to use are based in Kathmandu. It’s not possible to fly from Chitwan to Pokhara without going back via Kathmandu, and the cost of the tour would also significantly increase were flights used throughout as standard.
As this is one of our cultural adventure tours we have intentionally planned an itinerary which is fairly busy in parts with some more relaxed sections such as those in Chitwan and in Pokhara where a free day has also been incorporated into the itinerary. I was pleased to read in your email that you felt this type of tour matched with your requirements of discovering the country and seeing the way in which the local population lives.
Overall it does sound as though you had a good time on the tour and got to experience the real Nepal, though I’m sorry if some aspects of the tour didn’t meet with your expectations, and if the pollution and litter issues especially in Kathmandu, spoiled things in any way. I do hope that you’ll decide to join us for another adventure in the future.
Responsible Travel
Planet
How our company is making a difference:We know that making the positive difference we aim to achieve will not be an easy task. However, our enthusiasm and commitment towards our travel responsibility mission is far stronger than any obstacles. We believe that in order to achieve any objective, the company has to have accurate policies and procedures for the employees and the guests to follow in order to reach our goal.
We have decided that the environment is a major component of any local community and any negative effect on the environment would directly have an impact on the lives of the inhabitants of the local community. Therefore, we have drawn up a strict environmental protection policy that all our employees and travelers have to abide by. For example, we recycle empty ink cartridges. A company collects them and disposes of them the correct manner.
As part of our Nepal tour, our travelers get the opportunity to experience water rafting. This is where we brief them well with regards to throwing waste from food or plastic bottles into the river. They also visit wild life parks during the trip and again, any littering could cause serious danger to the wild animals if they try to eat it out of curiosity.
We refrain from using "bush toilets" and we encourage travelers to only make use of the toilet facilities in the villages. The fact that we have these villages at our disposal means we use solar heated water for showering rather than water heated by burning wood.
For us, Responsible Travel is the only way to travel.
People
Throughout our long tourism business journey, exceeding 15 years of travel operation in the Middle East, we have succeeded in establishing strong links with the communities we are dealing with in the host destinations.We believe that the Responsible Travel concept has to be a two-way strategy with both the travelers and the local community gaining benefits. We benefit the local communities we visit using a wide scope of activities that have a positive impact on the local economy, directly by donating money to charity organizations, financially supporting some local communities and by recruiting employees who belonging to the local community. We encourage our guests to buy local products and make use of services that people local community offer. We help indirectly through capacity building projects we implement with our employees and through the experiences and culture exchanges that take place between the locals and the travelers during our tours.
We promise to support the local community of every destination we take our travelers to. We will do this by employing local guides, using local handicraft shops and recommend shops to our travelers so that their holiday spending contributes to the people of that country. Furthermore, we provide each traveler with a tipping guide. By doing this we set a concept of tipping and gratuity for every person who will offer a form of service to the traveler.
We have also considered the social aspect of the local community and how to respect the customs and traditions of the inhabitants helping us operate our tours. We always provide our guests with all the information needed to understand the community they are visiting and we create valuable opportunities for the travelers and the locals to mingle and exchange ideas and thoughts.
The first objective is to operate our tours in the most perfect way possible. Our second objective, but not second in importance, is to benefit the local community, protect the environment, and have a positive social impact on the inhabitants living in our host destinations. One of the ways of doing this is to inform and educate our travelers on the cultures of the destinations. By doing this we aim to create a form of respect between the travelers and the local citizens who they will face along their tour.
We educate all our staff on the real life situations of each destination. Sales consultants will use this information to inform potential travelers of the correct information and threats that they may face. By creating long lasting relationships with our local ground handlers, we are able to establish what needs the community has and through their information we can inform our travelers what they can contribute to the local community from their home countries.
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