Responsible Travel Commitments

Sustainability and Ethics Standards

We believe travel can be a force for good, for animals, for people, and for the places that hold them.
Our standards exist to protect wildlife, respect communities, reduce environmental impact, and keep you informed so you can make ethical choices.

We also believe travel itself matters. Seeing the world, connecting with wildlife and cultures beyond our own, and understanding what is worth protecting – these things change people. They changed us. That is exactly why we take the environmental side of travel seriously. The offset contributions and climate commitments ion this page exist because we want travel to remain possible, meaningful, and worth doing – for our guests, for the communities we visit, for the animals we go to see, and for the earth.

Our core commitments

Animals first. Wild animals are not props, performers, or backdrops for our ego.
Community respect. Culture is not a costume, it is someone’s life.
Reduce, then repair. We reduce impact wherever we can, then fund credible climate and community actions.
Transparency. We name our standards clearly, and we invite questions.

Animal Welfare and Wildlife Ethics

The most meaningful wildlife encounters are wild. We believe animals are not here for our entertainment or our cameras. They are here for their own lives, and we are guests in their world. Our animal welfare standards are built on World Animal Protection guidance, one of the leading global organizations working specifically on cruelty in wildlife tourism. These are not suggestions for our guests. They are the way we operate.

- No animal entertainment, no animal rides. We do not promote camel riding, elephant riding, or any activity that uses animals for human amusement or profit. Elephant rides in particular carry a lasting physical cost – years of training to make a wild animal submissive, and spinal damage from carrying tourists and a saddle that the animal’s back was never built to support. Learn more from World Animal Protection’s “Don’t Get Taken for a Ride” campaign.
- No captive wildlife experiences. We do not visit captive wildlife attractions, except bona fide rescue or sanctuary settings where animals cannot be safely returned to the wild and where welfare is the first priority. (See our sanctuary evaluation standards below.)
- No animal selfies – wild or captive. No handling, no staged encounters, no closing the gap for a tighter shot. If touching, holding, bathing, baiting, or posing within reach is offered – we walk away, no matter how wild the setting looks. A leopard that approached the vehicle because it was baited before carries the same disruption as a captive photo op. We follow the World Animal Protection Wildlife Selfie Code, which asks whether the animal is being held or restrained, whether it is being baited, and whether it is free to move in its natural home. If the answer raises any concern, we don’t take the shot. And it protects our guests too – injuries from animals approached for photos are not rare.
- No feeding wild animals for viewing. We do not support provisioning or baiting wildlife to create closer sightings. Baiting changes an animal’s behavior long after we leave – and it often ends badly for the animal once it starts approaching the wrong vehicle or the wrong person. For more on why this matters, see World Animal Protection’s responsible wildlife watching guidance.
- Keep a respectful distance. We follow guidance from local authorities and conservation best practice, and we choose operators who do the same. Crowding an animal for a better view is one of the most common ways well-meaning travelers cause harm without realizing it.
- Stay on designated roads and tracks. We do not support off-road driving outside of designated areas, and we will not pay, tip, or otherwise reward a driver or guide for leaving the track – not for a closer view, not for a better photo, not for a “guaranteed” sighting, no matter how rare the animal. Tires crush nests and burrows we can’t see, damage vegetation that takes years to recover, and compact soil that both animals and plants depend on. Vehicle movement outside designated tracks also breaks down wildlife corridors – the connecting habitat animals rely on to move, find mates, and feed. If a driver goes off-road without our agreement, we report it to the operator and to the park authority, every time.
- No naming wild animals. We do not encourage turning wild animals into characters for our story. The moment an animal has a name, it stops being a wild creature with its own life and starts being a prop in ours. We focus on respectful observation, learning, and appreciation instead.
- Wildlife tourism should actively support conservation. We prioritize experiences that demonstrably benefit habitats, biodiversity, and local communities.
- No trophy hunting. We do not support trophy hunting or any itinerary element that promotes it. The demand behind trophy photo culture and canned hunting operations runs on the same logic as the wildlife selfie industry – animals bred and handled purely to be close to a human, whether the result is a selfie or a kill shot.

Our commitment to tigers

We are proud members of TOFTigers (Travel Operators for Tigers), a global campaign that works with tour operators, destination management companies, and lodges to turn wildlife tourism into a genuine conservation tool for tigers and the forests they depend on. For our India trips, we work with PUG-certified lodges – properties that have met TOFTigers’ strict Practices Under Guidelines standards for ecological and ethical operation. When you travel to a tiger reserve with us, part of what you are doing is voting with your itinerary dollars for the future of that forest.

How we evaluate sanctuaries and rescues

Sanctuaries can do essential work, and they can also be used as marketing cover. We include a rescue or sanctuary only when we have done our own due diligence. We look for welfare-first practices, ethical education, and a clear “no exploitation” approach. In practice, that means:

No breeding program designed to keep numbers up for visitors
No direct contact or photo opportunities with guests
No animals trained to perform or pose
A straight, verifiable answer about how every resident actually arrived there

If a venue allows you to ride, hug, cuddle, or take a selfie with a wild animal, cruelty is almost certainly involved – regardless of what the signage says.

Environmental Sustainability, Waste, and Plastics

No single-use plastic bottles, whenever feasible. We plan for filtered water refills and encourage reusable bottles on every trip.
Pack out what we bring in. We leave places cleaner than we found them, and we minimize packaging and disposables throughout.
Responsible purchasing. We avoid wildlife products, ivory, shells, coral, feathers, and other items that may harm animals or ecosystems – and we ask our guests to do the same.
Low-impact choices. We favor small groups, nature-respectful activities, and operators who protect habitats and follow park rules.

Climate Action, Carbon, and Making It Better Than We Found It

Travel has a footprint, especially flights. Offsets do not erase emissions from flying, so our approach is reduce first, then fund verified climate and nature actions as part of every trip.

Every trip includes a climate contribution. Depending on the trip and the partners we are working with, this may include verified carbon offset credits, direct funding for climate-positive projects, or both. Not every trip includes a formal carbon offset purchase – we tell you exactly what is included before you travel, and we don’t claim more than we can verify.
An offset covers the footprint of this trip, not your life. We invite every guest to think past the days they travel with us. If you want a credible, straightforward way to take climate action in your daily life, we will point you to the tools and partners we trust.
Every trip includes a nature or community contribution. Examples include tree planting through reputable partners, habitat support, or locally guided community projects selected with local input.
We choose credibility over convenience. We prioritize transparent, verified projects, and we keep improving as standards evolve.

Partners we work with and are building toward

One Tree Planted. A widely used reforestation nonprofit with partner programs across many of our destinations.

Sustainable Travel International. Climate action and carbon offset solutions built specifically for trips and tour operators.

Carbon Tanzania. A forest conservation and carbon project developer working directly with Maasai, Hadza, and Datooga communities in Tanzania to protect forest and wildlife habitat. Carbon Tanzania channels global climate finance directly to the stewards of Tanzania’s forests. We are actively working toward a more formal relationship with them, and we will share their tools with guests so you have a direct way to support this work in your own daily life as well.

This document is a living commitment. We revisit it as we learn, as our partners evolve, and as the places we visit change. If you have questions about any of these standards, or if you witness something on a trip that conflicts with them, we want to know.

Cultural Responsibility and Community Partnership

Local leadership matters. We prioritize locally owned guides, businesses, and community-led experiences whenever possible. The expertise of the people who live in and with these places is irreplaceable, and we build our itineraries around it.
Respect, consent, and privacy. We always ask before photographing people, homes, ceremonies, or children. “No” is complete. No means no, in every language, on every trip.
Fair exchange. We choose partners who pay fairly, treat staff well, and avoid exploitative “poverty tourism.” We do not design or participate in experiences that exist only to show our guests how others live without offering those communities anything meaningful in return.
Learn, do not consume. We favor experiences that educate and deepen understanding – not those that turn culture into a performance. There is a difference between being invited into a community’s life and buying a staged version of it.
No roadside handouts. We don’t throw sweets, cash, or gifts from the vehicle, and we don’t organize group giving to children we pass. We know that a guest may sometimes give something privately, in a moment we don’t witness, and we are not in the business of policing personal kindness after the fact. But we don’t turn it into a group moment – vehicle stopped, everyone gathered, cameras out – because being watched and given to as a spectacle is its own form of disruption for a child, separate from any good intention behind it. Research from the ChildSafe Movement is clear that even well-meant giving can pull children out of school and into dependency cycles. If a guest wants to give, we redirect that generosity toward a vetted local organization instead.
Give back with integrity. Each trip includes a community support element, chosen with local input, to strengthen what the community itself values most. We are building a standing list of vetted community programs in each destination we visit. We draw on resources like GlobalGiving, which vets grassroots nonprofits by country, and Tourism Cares, which works specifically with travel companies to connect them to locally rooted projects. The same standard we hold our climate partners to – transparency, verification, and no greenwashing – applies here.

A note on community giving from a distance

We want our guests to be able to support the places we visit beyond the trip itself. We are in the process of curating a destination-by-destination list of vetted organizations, chosen with local input, where your ongoing support goes to work in a way that communities have actually asked for. We will share that list with every guest before and after travel.

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

Albert Einstein