Specific, not aspirational
We cap porter loads at 20 kg regardless of what a group hands over, which is below the legal maximum and is the single most meaningful thing a trekking company can do. Every porter and guide on our trips carries medical and accident insurance that we pay for, plus adequate footwear, eyewear and shelter at altitude. If a group's bags exceed the cap we add a porter rather than the weight.
Everything our groups carry up comes back down, including batteries and foil packaging, which teahouses otherwise burn. We supply water purification rather than bottled water on every trek — a fourteen-day Everest trek with two clients avoids roughly ninety plastic bottles. We do not claim to be carbon neutral, because a business that flies people between continents is not.
Guides are recruited from the regions they work in and employed directly rather than through a contractor. Teahouses are chosen partly on whether they are family-run rather than absentee-owned. Wages are above the TAAN minimum and paid whether or not a client tips, because tipping is a bonus, not a substitute for a wage.
We decline requests that put a group somewhere it should not be — restricted-area routes without the permit and the minimum party size, trails during closure, or a peak-season Base Camp itinerary compressed below a safe acclimatisation profile. Occasionally that costs us a booking. It costs less than the alternative.
We do not run elephant-back safaris, we do not include captive-animal attractions on any itinerary, and we do not sell orphanage or school visits as an experience. We also do not fundraise on your behalf or add an optional donation at checkout — if you want to support a project in the valley you walked through, ask your guide and we will point you at one that is real.
Being honest about it
Tourism in Nepal is a significant part of the economy and a significant load on the places people come to see. A trek generates waste, uses firewood or kerosene, and puts pressure on water in villages that had little to spare before trekkers arrived. Nothing on this page cancels that out.
What a company can honestly control is narrow: how much a porter carries, whether they are insured, where the rubbish ends up, who gets paid, and whether an itinerary is safe. We would rather be accountable on those five than make a claim about the planet we cannot evidence.
If you see something on one of our trips that contradicts this page, tell us and we will fix it. That offer is the only part of a responsible-travel policy that ever really works.
