Borneo 8 day tour, the wild heart of Borneo

Planet

Making a difference to planet and people underpin our itineraries and travel philosophy, across destinations. Borneo is an incredible example of this. As a hot spot for eco conscious travellers who are keen to immerse in local culture in a meaningful and informed way, we have gone above and beyond to ensure that we maximise the positive impact of international travel in this location.

Firstly, encouraging tourism in Sarawak is important as the lesser visited state in Malaysian Borneo. Promoting hidden gems that divert from the normal tourist trail helps to minimise environmental degradation in tourist hotspots. It also encourages the government to maintain areas of protected forest.

As part of your tour package, you will enjoy a diversity of excursions and activities that have been checked and vetted by our team. These involve a range of human powered transport, for example travelling by traditional long tail boat and hiking. All our trips can be made vegan and or vegetarian friendly on request for instance when enjoying local delicacies in Kuching, and our helpful assistance travel with zoe can give specific food recommendations to accommodate more environmentally friendly choices.
An awareness of environmental degradation is paramount for travellers in Borneo. Not only is it omnipresent when travelling through a landscape where palm plantations stand at a harsh dichotomy to lush green rainforest, it should permeate into the travellers code of conduct when visiting. Even before take off, we offer tools to our customers to encourage sustainability, carbon reduction and caring for the environment both at home and away. These include 'zero waste while travelling: our top tips', as well as our 'make it meaningful policy'. Furthermore, due to the unique location in an immersive natural environment, our places to stay naturally bring the traveller into closer proximity with the environment, ensuring their reconnection to nature. This is an investment in their future interest in sustainability.

As a business, we are keen to practice what we preach. As a UK team, we recycle 80% of our waste in a closed- loop system, work in a b-corp office space, and are working towards b-corp status ourselves. We also partner with Earthly, a company that chooses nature based solutions to invest in the future of the natural world. This aims to protect, better manage and restore ecosystems while addressing global challenges. All of Earthly’s projects remove carbon, restore biodiversity and improve livelihoods. A £5 donation is added to each parties itinerary as standard.

All guides are trained and qualified, and we visit only National Parks and rehabilitation centres that follow our stringent animal welfare policy. We’re serious about this animal welfare stuff and want to do everything we can to improve the welfare of animals in tourism. We’ve therefore teamed up with animal welfare experts, ANIMONDIAL. Their vision is to minimise tourism’s impact on animals, natural environments and the people that depend upon them. They’ve helped us to improve the welfare standards of our trips even further and create long-term plans to support animals in tourism. Best of all though, we’ve worked together to create an Animal Welfare in Tourism Starter Kit for small businesses, to help other travel companies improve their animal welfare standards too.

People

Our trips aim to put positively impacting local communities at front and centre of our itineraries, as local interactions are what make our trips so fantastic.

We work with small, boutique style special stays full of authentic flare work twofold by offering you a unique experience and also supporting local business ventures and local employment, thus supporting the local economy. For instance This trip puts positively impacting local communities at the front and centre of the itinerary. This is exemplified by the home stay with an Iban family. The profit from the overnight stay at the Longhouse goes straight to the locals. As part of the trip, travellers will visit a local market where they buy food for the evening meal, and also have the opportunity to buy gifts, thus boosting the local economy even further.
At the longhouse the power is supplied by solar panelling on the roof. The solar panels would not have been there without the income the tourists generate by visiting the longhouse. During your trip, there is a wealth of local shops, cafe’s, bars and restaurants to visit and enjoy for instance in Kuching which is full of local ventures, from cafe's and restaurants to markets, which visitors are encouraged to explore and support.and among the small local communities in Batang Ai. This helps bolster the local economy further.

One of the key aspects of our itineraries is that we work with local partners who are based in country in order to provide the most authentic insight into everyday life in the destination, and divert from the usual tourist trail but also supports the country's economy even before our customer has touched down as the local partner helps to develop their itinerary.

We maximise local economic opportunities further by using only locally owned excursion companies where you will meet and learn from expert local guides throughout the trip on excursions, for instance when visiting Semenggoh Wildlife Centre.

All of our guides and local partners are provided with a fair wage and secure job. We receive nothing but positive feedback from customers who have benefitted from their expertise, which is second to none in the region. This benefits both parties as on the one hand supporting the local economy, and on the other, providing visitors with the best and most enriching experience available.