Responsible Travel Policy
As tourism is one of the largest economic sources for many countries around the globe, it’s crucial for Mongolians too. Besides its economical benefits, tourism also has negative impacts on land, wildlife, its people and their culture. The only way to reduce its negative footprints and improve its benefits is to implement responsible travel discipline for each tour that goes through the globe.
We, the Way To Nomads team have been making a positive impact on our destination: Mongolia, supporting our local communities to improve their life quality, supporting them to conserve the world’s last surviving nomadic culture, supporting wildlife foundations for Gobi bear, Snow Leopard, the Saiga antelope, supporting eco-lodges in the gobi region against poverty, global warming & desertification. And also strive hard to reduce our daily carbon footprint in our tours and our office environment.
Our Responsible acts:
We prefer a small-sized team for each of our journeys:
A small group is more respectful to the host families that we visit amid our journeys & this leads to a more genuine experience, closer and real insight for you as our guest. The group size of each journey in Way T Nomads will be 8 people at the biggest.
We prefer animal welfare:
- We never sell/organize dog sledging tour
- We never sell/organize hunting trips.
- We really care for our riding horses, camels & reindeer
Domesticated horses, camels, and reindeer are the only animals that we allow to ride in our journeys, but the following should be concerned:
- Riders should choose a domesticated animal that is appropriate to their size.
- Animals should not carry more than half their body weight.
- Animals should not be ridden in extreme conditions: extreme hot, extreme cold, heavy rain, strong snowstorm, Gobyn Ugalz [desert strong sand/dust storm]
- Animals should not be ridden with harnessing equipment or gears
- Animals should not be ridden If the animal has any wound [including saddle hidden wounds], and any health issues
- Riders & horse guides are not allowed to use any physical force to ridden animals [including hitting or beating with crops, sticks or hands] to control or manoeuvre the animal.
We support conserving cultures & traditions of minorities:
Mongolia is a home of unique cultures & strong traditions and kept our nomadic cultural heritage & traditions for centuries. As a result of globalization and modernization, some of the nomadic traditions encounter the danger of extinction.
We the Way To Nomads team, as a local activist travel agency, we promote the nomadic cultures and traditions to the world through our social media networks, and we collaborate with local organizations including the Art Council of Mongolia, Tumen Ekh Ensemble of Traditional Music and Dance, and more local people on some projects with the aim of cultural conservations.
We also introduce our nomadic culture & traditions via cultural event journeys including Golden Eagle Festival Journey for promoting Nomadic eagle falconry tradition, Lunar New Year Journey for introducing Nomadic Traditional New Year – Tsagaan Sar, Reindeer Adventure Journey for Reindeer herding culture, and more on our tours page.
We support funds for endangered animals
- We collaborate with Save The Gobi Bear Mazaalai Foundation to improve the conservation & life quality of the Gobi bears, and we organize journeys to the place where the Gobi bears live, and donate 5% of the profit of the journey to the foundation for the Gobi bears.
Gobi bear [Mazaalai] is a subspecies of the Brown bear that inhabits in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. No other place on the entire Earth is home to this rare species of Bear.. The Gobi bears are listed as Critically Endangered in the Mongolian Red Book of Endangered Species. Mazaalai is near extinction & globally threatened, and there are only a population of less than 50 adult species left throughout the entire world. The Way T Nomads team was involved in helping the Gobi bear as our responsibility.
- The team of Way To Nomads also collaborates with the Snow Leopard Foundation of Mongolia in order to conserve snow leopards in Mongolia and to improve their protection through the community-based conservation programme of the Snow Leopard Foundation.
Snow Leopard is a spotted leopard lives in the mountains across a vast range of Asia. They are insulated by thick hair—in shades of grey or creamy yellow and covered with greyish-black spots—and their wide, fur-covered feet act as natural snowshoes. Snow leopards have powerful legs and are tremendous jumpers, able to leap as far as 50 feet. These big cats use their long tails for balance and as blankets to cover sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill. They are shy and reclusive, and rarely seen in the wild.
We are building our wildlife & nature foundation, named The Expedics Travel Foundation.
The Expedics Travel Foundation is the not-for-profit for Way To Nomads Limited. The foundation is aimed to support green projects including the Green-lodge building project and tree planting projects in the rural areas of Mongolia where most affected by desertification as a result of global warming. Also aimed to invest wildlife funds for protecting endangered animals and more… Read more on The Expedics Travel foundation page, which will be published soon.
