Gokyo Treks & Expedition is a responsible tourism entrepreneur based in Kathmandu Nepal. The agency is an eco-friendly tour operator with an objective to improve, protect and preserve the environment. We are members of various eco-friendly tourism societies in Nepal and outsiders that promote responsible tourism and sustainable tourism.
Sustainable tourism is a concept to covers the complete tourism experience, including concern for economic, social, and environmental issues as well as attention to improving tourists’ experiences and addressing the demands of host communities. As responsible tourism entrepreneurs, we create better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.
1. Social/Cultural Impact
Gokyo Treks & Expedition Agency believes that it’s miles viable to perform commercially inside the Eco-Tourism Sector of the enterprise and additionally to keep the herbal and cultural background of a place thru advertising of sustainable tourism. In our work, we actively sell and enforce this philosophy on every occasion a possibility offers itself. The agency runs a non-governmental Non-profit organization (cdfn) is dedicated to offering health and education for needy people to the remote parts of Nepal.
2. Environmental/Ecological Impact/ Waste Management.
Gokyo agency behaves all treks with an eye to keep away from any disturbance to the manner of life. And strongly participate in environmental leadership, to make a certain tour that has minimum effect on the impact on the local environment.
Moreover, we advise our customers to restrict the quantity of waste and remove it in an accountable way. In addition, we assist hotels in interchange from plastic bottles to imparting a fill-up station. So, take a water bottle (metal) with water purification tablets and make use of tap water. It’s just a simple example that we save the mountain environment from plastic bottles.
We commit to providing our clients with a safe and environment-friendly trekking tour experience inside the Himalayas and surrounding regions. All Gokyo Treks staff members are required to attend ACAP, TAAN, NTB & IPPG courses on sustainability and to practice the methods in the environmental impact of our clients/guides to an absolute minimum.
Here are some environmental-friendly practices that engage the agency to assure that we do our part to keep our environmental impact to a minimum:-
- We use only refillable bottles instead of using plastic bottles (and prefer our clients to do the same).
- We use low-impact transportation such as walking, cycling, and public transportation whenever possible.
- We refrain from using extraneous paper products to reduce trekking refuse.
- We hire local expert guides for our business who know the areas better than others.
- Buy local organic foods and produce instead of purchasing imported items.
- Leave only footprints on the trail and always carry out what we carry in.
3. Economic impact
We emphasize the intensive use of locally available products and maximize the economic benefits for local communities. In addition to this, we support rural development projects by contributing 10% of our profits generated each business year, which enables us to raise directly the living standards of orphan kids for their health and education in Nepal. On camping trips to wilderness areas, we buy food from local villagers and only use local tea houses and lodges.
4. Innovative Practices
Our company is usually been striving to assist develop regions of Nepal. Attempt to hold the manner with the aid of using creating a non-stop attempt in coming across thrilling new locations in the country. Furthermore, we initiate cleansing campaigns inside the close by villages that contain a whole lot of nearby participation. The concept is to elevate hygiene and environmental consciousness inside the villages. Such campaigns additionally train the villagers to hold their villages and the environment neat and clean.
5. Animal Welfare
As a responsible tour Operator Company commits to ensuring that the welfare of animals is preserved. For example, we never use the Elephant back safari (Elephant riding safari) in Nepal as they do treat elephants not nicely. So we don’t use animals for safari tours for our customers.
6. Local Guides and drivers
Gokyo Treks Agency hires local guides and drivers to create employment possibilities and supply them with an alternative to earning a truthful salary thru tourism. We provide education and records on social and environmental policies.
7. The Nature Conservation
Nature and the natural world are key elements of our tours. But simply the stress of sheer numbers of site visitors can do critical harm to the natural sites. We offer records to our customers as a way to revel in the herbal surroundings even as defensive it for others to revel in inside the future.
8. Code of Conduct in opposition to Child Sex Tourism
We comprehend that the sexual exploitation of kids is a worldwide problem. In all our sports and operations we actively disagree with all forms of sexual exploitation of kids all around the world.
9. Dress code
We usually tell our customers to follow the dress code in every specific place. In the primary briefing the excursion manual will point out the overall rule to use dress and on specific occasions or visits, the excursion manual will advocate to customers the way to wear clothes.
We follow trekking Principles: the 5 Guidelines outlined by IPPG (International Porter Protection Group)
- Hiking gears for porter (windproof jacket and pants, a fleece jacket, long pants, suitable shoes (sneakers), socks, a hat, gloves, and sunglasses. The clothes are depending upon the weather season and the elevation you go to. Porters are often staying at the lodges but the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN) also build porter shelter in the mountains and serve food, water, and accommodation.
- Every porter will have proper insurance (Life insurance plus medical insurance).
- Porters will not pay off because of illness/injury without the leader assessing their condition carefully. No confusion, the sick porter will get some day’s salary. Continue hikes in higher elevations result in death obviously. We never send sick/injured porters to return alone, but with someone who speaks their local language and understands their problem, along with a letter describing their complaint. We provide sufficient funds for treatment and rescue.
- Each of our agency porters will carry a maximum of 24 kilos [lodge trek] or 30 kilos [camping trek]. Sometimes weight limits are depending upon the higher elevation you go and weather conditions.
Tip
The Gokyo Treks Agency recommends that visitors offer a truthful, affordable tip to the neighborhood courses, cleaners, cooks, drivers, etc. A tip could be very crucial however we will in no way pressure customers to tip, as it’s far voluntary. Our advice for the local crew depends on the work, the currency, etc. We will brief our clients that what tipping means to us (our culture) is much different from what it means for the crew (their culture), so they are aware that tipping is very important.