Travel Green List: Tours that make a difference in 2023

Part of travelling sustainably is avoiding those places that are already creaking under the weight of tourism. Consequently, InsideAsia’s rugged Trekking the Cloud Forests of Laos tour eschews the beaten track for the raw, remote jungle of Nam Et-Phou Louey National Park, taking a five-day trek into one of the largest wilderness areas in Laos. Its difficult location means few make it this deep into the jungle, and guests will have the rare opportunity to stay with remote Khmu communities, who receive a portion of the profits from the trip. It’s about as far off-grid as it gets, as you explore waterfall-striped forests where elephants, gibbons, clouded leopards and sun bears roam freely, embark on a trip to summit Phou Louey mountain (2,257m), camp out at salt licks with park rangers to spy wildlife, and sleep in spectacular hanging ‘jungle nests’. It is a world that few outsiders ever get to see. 

More information: InsideAsia. Departures are year-round (best: May–Oct); 10 nights.

Menorca is that rarity among the hard-partying Balearic islands. For the past 30 years, this quiet Spanish isle has operated as a giant UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, protecting some 220 bird species and 1,000 varieties of flora. In turn, small-scale tourism has begun to thrive, propped up by guilt-free adventures such as the Camí de Cavalls trail (185km) that wraps the scenic coast. Pura Aventura’s Menorca Coastal Trails Inn to Inn tour samples a handful of its sections on a self-guided trek through bird-rich wetlands, forests of sweet-smelling Aleppo pines and tiny fishing villages. It is travel at its slowest, as you plot a route around Roman, Moorish and medieval sites and kick off your boots at tavernas where field-to-fork produce and locally made cheeses and gins freely scatter menus.

More information: Pura Aventura. Departures Mar–Jun & Sep–Nov; 7 nights.

The restoration of the vast Iberá wetlands in Argentina is almost as miraculous an achievement as the reintroduction of the first jaguar to its wilderness in 2020. Until then, this animal had been lost to the region for more than 70 years. Journeys with Purpose’s The Return of the Jaguar tour explores this land in the company of Sofía Heinonen, the executive director of Fundación Rewilding Argentina, who led the reintroduction and spent years devising ways to rewild the 750,000 hectares of now-protected wetland. Along with Sofía, guests will explore an area home to 30% of the country’s biodiversity, travelling by kayak, on foot and on horseback in search of its newly wild residents, while also learning about the work that went into keeping them both safe and free.

More information: Journeys with Purpose. Departure on 17 Sep; 8 days.

Travelling for a reason means that travel doesn’t just become the act of ticking boxes. It is a sentiment echoed by Wild Frontiers’ Adventures with Purpose: Cambodia trip, which not only explores classic sites, such as the vine-strangled temples of Angkor Wat and the tributaries of the Mekong, but shows visitors the work being done behind the scenes to help local people and wildlife thrive. Guests visit sanctuaries where former working elephants are now free to roam wild, watch a non-profit circus that offers refugees a way to make a living and perform, and stay with local families in floating villages where initiatives have enabled them to find new revenues from the creation of handicrafts. You will not only see the country as it really is, but put your money in the hands of those who need it.

More information: Wild Frontiers. Departures are year-round; 8 days.

Community-based travel has a very visible impact when it comes to Kenya’s Greater Masai Mara. The income its villages gain from such encounters helps them to sustain what is an often fragile existence; it also offers incentives to preserve the big wildlife that, in the past, has been a source of tension for local farmers. Gane & Marshall’s Into the Maasai Lands tour, in which travellers can meet, talk to and stay with nomadic communities, is a great example of this. It takes the form of a trek with a Maasai guide, walking the wilderness from Mount Longido to the blood-red waters of Lake Natron, then finishing with a safari to the game-packed Ngorongoro Crater. Along the way, visits to local villages teach about life on the plains and the difference that a local project bringing solar power to the villages has made.

More information: Gane & Marshall. Departures are year-round; 7 days.

Ensuring that the money you spend goes into the pockets of locals is one of the enduring joys of community travel, where income in remote locations can often be the difference between villagers having to migrate for work or being able to continue their way of life. G Adventures’ Local Living Ecuador – Amazon Jungle trip sees travellers enter the Amazon rainforest and stay in a Quichua village, bunking with a local family and hearing stories about the community’s history and its traditions. It also peers into life in the deep jungle, as you go on walks with the local shaman, take part in a healing ceremony and learn about the invaluable role cacao plays in the village. Most important of all is that the very people you meet are the ones that will benefit from you being there.

More information: G Adventures. Departures are year-round; 7 days.

Communities come in all shapes and sizes; the same goes for community-based travel. In the Japanese village of Kyoto-by-the-Sea, on the Tango Peninsula, lives a coastal collective of artisans. The village is perhaps best known for its 230 traditional funaya boathouses, which wrap the shores of Ine Bay, protected by the mountains that loom overhead. It makes for a wonderfully scenic stay, but it is the community’s centuries-old fishing and crafting cultures that are the focus of Audley Travel’s tailor-made Japan trip. A minimum of two days is spent on the peninsula, interacting with the villagers, learning about sustainable fishing techniques and meeting local swordsmiths and kimono makers helping to keep alive ancient crafts that are forever in danger of being lost to the ages.

More information: Audley Travel. Departures are year-round; 12-day tailor-made trip.

Having already made our 2023 Travel Hot List, it is fair to say that the newly launched 300km Pekoe Trail, which threads the tea estates of Central Sri Lanka, has caught our eye. The simple reason is that it takes visitors through rural villages where tourist dollars don’t usually penetrate, offering a very direct example of how low-impact travel can benefit local communities. Experience Travel Group’s tour of Sri Lanka includes three days’ guided hiking on sections around Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Ella, including hill-country homestays and visits to the Amba Estate, a community-based social enterprise selling organic produce. With trail sections just opening to travellers, this is a good chance to explore them before everyone else arrives.

More information: Experience Travel Group. Departures are year-round; 13 days.

Understanding the threats that wildlife faces from man-made interference is one way to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated. Black Tomato’s The Future of New Zealand’s Native Birds is part of its ‘Field Trip’ series of side adventures, which can be added on to larger tours. You’ll spend the day with a local activist, exploring why New Zealand’s bird population remains under siege from vermin brought over by settlers centuries ago. You’ll also help check, maintain and reset predator traplines in the Southern Alps and learn what’s being done to save these birds, before exploring the South Island’s glaciers and mountains, where you may even spy them in the wild.

More information: Black Tomato. This Field Trip (Nov–Mar) can be added to the 10-day South New Zealand: A Scenic Adventure tour.

‘Citizen science’ trips allow travellers to contribute to ongoing environmental research projects, usually by tracking the effects of pollution or the health of ecosystems. A great example is Exodus Travels’ Citizen Science Departures series; its Uzbekistan Uncovered trip is one of many where guests can collect data for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is best known for its Red List of endangered creatures. The trip includes everything you’d expect from a Silk Road adventure: nights in a yurt, visits to the fortresses of khans and spying the mosques and minarets of Samarkand. But in addition, guests will help collect samples for the IUCN’s eBioAtlas, a giant repository mapping flora and fauna across the world.

More information: Exodus Travels The next ‘Citizen Science’ departure is on 16 Sep; 11 days.

One of the great conservation success stories of recent times has been the growth of Central Africa’s mountain gorilla population, whose numbers were recorded at over 1,000 for the first time ever in the last census. Intrepid Travel’s Rwanda Gorilla Naming Ceremony & Uganda trip celebrates this by allowing visitors to join a baby-naming ceremony for gorillas born in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park over the past year. There are also treks to visit habituated families in Bwindi National Park as well as a fireside chat with a veterinarian from The Gorilla Doctors, an organisation that monitors the health of mountain and eastern lowland gorillas. It’s a rare chance to learn of the difficulties these primates face and what is being done to ensure they have the future that they deserve.

More information: Intrepid Travel. Next departure is 31 Aug 2023; 9 days.

Case studies

Join tour operators in supporting local communities on your next trip

A&K’s Bike Shop Programme

Abercrombie & Kent’s (A&K) bike shops are one of many projects that let visitors see a different side to their destination. Since 2015, the tour operator has orchestrated the donation of over 15,000 second-hand bicycles from the US, UK and Australia, shipping them to remote villages and rural areas in Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia, Uganda and beyond, where A&K has set up a number of community-run bike shops. These are operated entirely by local women, who sell the bikes within the community and use the profits as salary and to buy spare parts, business licences, and to ship in more stock. Not only does the local community gain, allowing families and workers to travel further and sustainably, but travellers can visit and see the results for themselves on A&K’s Tailor Made Journeys, meeting those involved and learning more about local life.

More information: abercrombiekent.com

G Adventure’s Planeterra

G Adventures was among the first tour operators to set up a non-profit partner. Planeterra was created in 2003 with the aim of identifying the needs of at-risk groups and people within the communities and areas that the tour operator typically worked, helping locals to benefit from tourism. It opens up important opportunities for travellers to make connections that they just wouldn’t ordinarily make on most trips. In supporting these local businesses and non-profits, guests with G Adventures can have some truly unique experiences, such as breakfasting at the likes of Sthree Craft Shop and Café in Sri Lanka, which helps women and at-risk youths in Kandy to train and find work, or join the Maldives Plastic Programme in collecting and upcycling the endless waste that washes up on the islands’ beaches, helping those making a difference.

More information: planeterra.org

Make Travel Matter with Contiki & Uniworld

Travelling with a purpose means exploring the world in a way that has a positive impact. Case in point are the ‘Make Travel Matter’ trips run by tour operator Contiki and river cruise specialist Uniworld. These look to provide experiences in line with the United Nations Global Goals, which help tackle poverty, access to education, equality, climate change and sustainability issues. Take, for example, Contiki’s walking tour of Split on its Croatia Island Sail adventure, where guests explore the history of women’s rights in the city and are hosted by a non-profit that supports a counselling centre for female victims of abuse. Or there’s the visit to Calcutta Rescue on Uniworld’s India’s Golden Triangle & the Sacred Ganges cruise, which helps the city’s underprivileged children by providing health clinics, schools and training.

More information: contiki.com, uniworld.com

World Expeditions’ Cook Stove Project

Some community-based projects offer a chance for travellers to be more hands on. One example is World Expeditions’ stove project in the Andean mountains of Peru, where it has been working with a village near the Mayan ruins of the Sacred Valley. Households there typically cook with wood-burning stoves, whose thick smoke can cause health problems for families. The tour operator has been working to install smokeless stoves, raising money through donations. In addition, it also offers extensions to tours in the area so that travellers can help install them, working alongside locals in a village that is just 25 minutes’ drive from the tourist hub of Ollantaytambo yet far off the usual beat. It is a great way to help the community and see a side to Peru that is very different to that which most visitors will experience.

More information: worldexpeditions.com

Visit our Travel Green List hub to see more sustainable destinations, hotels, tour operators and transport companies 

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