Responsible travel needs to be more responsible. With all the talk about responsible travel, carbon neutral trips, and eco-tours in the adventure travel world these days, you’d think companies are really operating in a fundamentally different way. Not so.

Tom Driggs Trying Not to Destroy Luri Gompa, Upper Mustang, Nepal, 1996

When it comes to adventure travel, while platitudes of responsible travel rule the surface message, profit tends to trump social responsibility. Most adventure travel companies would vehemently deny this. Why? They’ve come to believe their own hype.

I used to be part of the problem. I’ve run my own adventure travel company, and then a large division of a global adventure travel company. I first realized how much of an impact tour groups could have on a sensitive culture when I guided my first group on a trip to Upper Mustang, at the time a semi-autonomous kingdom in central Nepal, in 1996.

At the time we visited, fewer than 500 westerners had ever visited Mustang’s capital, Lo Manthang. Perhaps 30 westerners at that point had visited Luri Gompa, a long-abandoned ancient cave monastery East of Lo Manthang. As we arrived after a long hike, we marveled at the ancient structure’s surreal beauty.

Within minutes, however, we realized that the monastery was literally crumbling under our feet. Just being there, standing on the mud-and-stick-daubed platform roof, walking on the rickety elevated platform walkway entrance, it was disintegrating before our eyes. I realized then, that I was in a business, adventure travel, that was inherently destructive.

At one level or another, adventure travel companies have each made peace with the idea that there are destructive elements to bringing a tour group to a foreign culture. That destruction is wide ranging, from the environment, to cultures, to local people’s health. They rationalize by saying that despite the negative effects, facilitating travel experiences brings the world closer together, or spurs action to save the environment. Cynically, some just rationalize that if they don’t bring people there, someone else will. I know because I’ve done it.

Here are five inconsistencies that exist between the hype adventure travel companies would like you to believe and reality:

1. A Tour Operator That Bills Itself as Carbon Neutral, is Never Truly Carbon Neutral. Several forward-thinking adventure travel companies have gone to great lengths to make their operations carbon neutral. This is a great gesture, and worth doing. When they say carbon neutral, though, what they really mean is that they’re offsetting the carbon footprint of their operations on the ground. What about the carbon generated by all those intercontinental flights travelers take to get to their destination? No operator in the world insists that their travelers offset their flights. Why not? The fact is, operators know they would lose massive business, in a competitive marketplace, if they required their passengers to offset their flights.

2. Offsetting your Carbon Footprint, Won’t Directly Affect The Area You’re Traveling To. Ok, so even if your operator is “carbon neutral” and even if You “offset” the miles of your own flight, the real world impact of adventure travel is more than what a few carbon offsets can fix. Buying a few wind generation credits in North Dakota isn’t going to do much to stop the acrid black smoke belching out of that old truck your group uses in China or keep that Nepalese hillside from being deforested for wood to burn to heat lodges.

3. Commercialized Adventure Travel Leaves A Lasting Public Health Impact. While adventure travel brings western tourists face-to-face with some of the most primitive cultures on earth, adventure travel companies have done little to “offset” the damage done. For example, well-meaning tour group members give sweets to children, leading to massive tooth decay problems in areas where there previously was none. Companies have done nothing to help fix sewage systems that can’t keep up with the increasing numbers of tourists they themselves bring to Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Indonesia.

4. Adventure Travel Companies Pollute With Impunity, Whether They Mean to Or Not. The 50,000 trekkers adventure travel companies take to Everest Base Camp and the Annapurna Circuit each year collectively leave large landfills full of garbage in villages along the way. 150,000 people come to the Galapagos Islands each year in planes that bring in foreign species that threaten wildlife diversity and in boats that leak fuel that kills fish. Sensitive areas like Nepal and the Galapagos are being “loved” to death by companies that seem to refuse to regulate themselves.

5. Adventure Travel Accelerates The Decline of Indigenous Cultures. By simply taking travelers to remote places and cultures, adventure travel companies expose those cultures to Ex-Officio-wearing, ipod-listening, Nikon-toting travelers. If you don’t think that over a few years, exposure like that is going to cause Phuba in a Tibetan village to want to leave home and family and head to Lhasa to “get rich,” you’re delusional. If a company does a good job of educating their travelers on being sensitive to indigenous cultures, then limited visits to an area that’s seen little western influence is not going to have a lasting impact. When tour operators repeatedly visit a sensitive area and only pay lip service to education, that’s when cultures are changed forever.

Is there a solution? Adventure travel companies that are run like a traditional business are not in a position to make changes that would run counter to their ultimate goal – profit. To require carbon offsets, to make substantive changes to how trips are operated, to really educate travelers, to require them to suffer a bit for the sake of the environment and cultures, to give back to the specific locations they operate in, and most radically, to never repeat a trip, would be a radically different, but much needed approach. That wouldn’t be a particularly profitable company, but it would be a worthy goal.

©2010 Adventu.re. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve seen this over and over, trekkers trekking for weeks on their vacation trek of a lifetime to Everest Base Camp on a standard Everest Trek expecting a view of Everest, only to find, doh, they can’t see the mountain. Granted, from the nondescript dusty hill of 5,545 meter Kala Patar, a few miles West of base camp, you can see the summit pyramid of the peak, but to me, that view isn’t even as impressive as the view from the base of Mount Rainier. You’d think that the word would get out, but no.

The view of Everest from Gokyo Ri.

More and more trekkers are discovering that trekking to Gokyo affords the best views of Everest (and more).

If you’ve only got 2 weeks, give base camp the miss, and head for Gokyo. If you’ve got 3 weeks, trek to base camp, sure, but make sure you head back out over the Cho La Pass to check out the best views of Everest from Gokyo Ri and from Scoundrel’s View.

Hiking a couple of hours from Gokyo village to the top of Gokyo Ri at 5.483 meters, hikers are rewarded with a beautiful, early morning view of Everest, but also a panorama of 4 of the world’s 14 8,000 meter peaks, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, and Cho Oyo.

Hiking a half day North of Gokyo, to 5th lake you can get an amazing view of Everest few people see, and can actually see the Northwest side of the Mountain, the Great Coulour, as well as the Hillary Step. Best of all, you don’t even have to climb anything to see it, although, granted, you’ll be hiking gradually up near 5,000 meters. Here’s what Everest looks like from Scoundrel’s View at 5th Lake:

Everest from 5th Lake, Gokyo Valley, Nepal

If you really want a view of Everest, hike up the unnamed valley due west of 5th Lake, and go as high as you can (watch out for rockfall here). This is what you’ll see, an absolutely unreal view of much of Everest’s Northwest side:

Everest from high above Fifth Lake Gokyo, at approximately 5,700 meters.

For more information check out InsidrInfo.com’s page on trekking to Gokyo.

©2010 Adventu.re. All Rights Reserved.

Sunrise behind the still-unclimbed Macchapuchare or “Fish Tail Peak” from Poon Hill on the Annapurna Circuit Trek, Nepal Photo: Dan Passler

Newly-built roads now reach nearly all the way around Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit, the most popular long trek in the world. Is the journey is still worth the effort? Probably not, if you’re going with a big tour company that hasn’t updated their itinerary. Yes, if you plan your route carefully.

Back in the 1970’s, the Annapurna Circuit was an epic expedition crossing a 17,500 foot pass around some of the highest, most dangerous mountains in the Himalaya, through villages that had seen few Westerners. In the 80’s it became a well worn 3-week path trodden by savvy trekkers. By the 1990’s trekking companies were cashing in selling expeditionary “camping treks” while local Nepalis built elaborate lodges all the way around the circuit to cater to roughly 30,000 trekkers a year. Now, the Annapurna Circuit is undergoing a rapid transformation on an almost daily basis, with roads on the Kali Gandaki side reaching all the way to Muktinath and roads on the east side reaching to Bhulbule. The funny thing is, most tour companies just keep selling it as if it never changed.

So is it still worth going? If you want to stick to the traditional path, no way (unless you do it as a gonzo mountain bike trip). Give it the miss, go elsewhere. Whatever you do, don’t do a regular Annapurna Circuit trip itinerary. You’ll be sucking truck exhaust, you’ll see villages that have seen far too many tourists, and you’ll learn to loathe the vehicle noise. You’ll experience a mere shadow of what the trip used to be.

If, on the other hand, you’ve still got a bit of adventure in you, then the answer is, absolutely! You just have to plan better. Yes, there are roads, but, with careful planning or a good guide, you can still trek nearly the entire way through villages on the other side of the valley from the roads and avoid, for most part, the most touristed villages.

For the real adventurer, there’s the Annapurna Triple Bypass. Crossing passes, like the Mesokanto La, Kang La, and Namun La that see only a few dozen trekkers a year, you can circle Annapurna in 3-4 weeks on far more adventurous route. No one sells it, but I wouldn’t do the Annapurna Circuit any other way at this point.

Feel free to contact me if you want the scoop or for more info, checkout InsidrInfo.com’s page on the Annapurna Circuit.

©2010 Adventu.re. All Rights Reserved.

One of the most surprising things I found out when I began working for a large adventure travel company was that many of the “adventures” that the company billed to clients as “real life experiences” were actually canned and recycled shows for tourists. Case in point: Thuy, the one armed hat maker in Hue, Vietnam.

Thuy is amazing to watch. She’s overcome a great deal of hardship in her life. She makes wonderful, extraordinary, traditional Vietnamese hats, each with a silhouette built in when you hold it up to the light.

Led by an expert local guide, our group walked through back alleys and seemed to spontaneously happen upon Thuy’s small house in central Hue. We sat in a half circle and were moved by her story and her amazing dexterity. We felt like we were seeing something unique, something special– something truly off the beaten track and real. Spending time watching Thuy make hats was a great experience, one that many of our group held up as one of the most moving experiences on the best day of our trip to Vietnam.

When I later found out that three other groups from my company alone visited that day, and that hundreds of groups visit her each year, I felt a little cheated for having thought I was actually having an authentic experience. The tour leader didn’t inform the group, but I know the group would have all felt differently about the day, had they known how canned the experience actually was.

The number of photographs of Thuy out there on Google Images, Flickr, and Picasa are clear evididence of the sheer number of tourists who visit the one-armed hat maker in Hue each year.

As an industry insider, I look at people’s photographs from their trips to Vietnam and I see the same incense shop, the same back alley motorcycle tour, the same young monk, and yes, the same hat maker. I wonder how many of those clients actually think they’re having an “authentic,” and “unique experience.”

Am I saying, don’t travel with a tour group? No. Go on that adventure trip of a lifetime, but don’t forget that when you’re with a group, chances are someone’s been there before. Use time away from your group to seek out those truly spontaneous cultural experiences that you can only have in a one on one encounter.

©2010 Adventu.re. All Rights Reserved.

Lightning Over Short Hill Mountain

I was getting my butt thoroughly kicked. Ben Bressler, President of Natural Habitat Adventures and I were mountain biking on a steep singletrack hill climb up at Hall Ranch, near Boulder, Colorado. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was, umm, focusing. . . on not falling over and dying of a heart attack from being tragically out of shape. I didn’t notice the dark clouds rapidly forming over Long’s Peak on the horizon.

I kind of heard the thunder and I saw lightning flashes out of the corner of my eye, but I was too busy surviving the climb and finding the most efficient line on that the rocky trail to even think about doing something about it. Thank goodness Ben had the presence of mind to snap me out of my singular focus and deal or I would have just kept riding in a zone.

Ben Bressler,

We took refuge for a few minutes in a shallow hollow, among some bushes and a group of trees and watched the show as the unusually fast storm, with menacing lightning, thunder, and a dark squall line approached.

We did the calculations. At 5 seconds/mile, the thunder was a mile and half away. We were only a mile up the trail, and we figured we had just enough time to make a gonzo descent back down the trail and take refuge in the safety of the truck. Realizing our shallow gulley was not giving us nearly the protection we needed, a thunderclap we judged to be now just a mile away and the first drops of rain, were all the incentive we needed to bolt for the truck. We jumped on our bikes and made a wild descent with the storm licking at our heels, hopping rocks, dodging sheets of silvery rain, spurred on by deafening thunder that was just a few hundred yards off by now.

Back in the relative safety of the truck, we sat out a torrential downpour and major lightning, and passed the time exchanging stories of people we knew who hadn’t been so lucky with lightning. Within 15 minutes, in true Colorado fashion, the blue sky appeared, we got back on the trail, climbing for the second time that afternoon, none the worse. . .

The experience was another reminder of how capricious mother nature can be and how dynamic a mountain environment can be, and how pig headed and dumb we can sometimes be without a good partner to tell you you’re taking an unnecessary risk. You don’t want to mess with lightning. Check out this lightning safety decision tree and backcountry safety .pdf from the National Lightning Safety Institute.

©2010 Adventu.re. All Rights Reserved.