Environmental policy
Responsible travel and clean tourism in northern Pakistan
Leave only footprints. Take only pictures.
Northern Pakistan is not fragile because it is remote. It is fragile because it is now busy. This is what we do about that, and what we ask of you.
Where this policy came from
In August 2019 we walked up to Fairy Meadows from Tato village with a visiting overseas Pakistani family, on Independence Day. The mountain was everything people promise it is. The trail was not.
Junk food wrappers. Water bottles. Plastic bags. Hundreds of people were walking that path every week in season, and the litter was only accumulating, because almost nobody was carrying anything back down.
That family spent part of their holiday filling bags with other people's rubbish alongside us, the whole way to the meadow. We wrote about it, called it #SaafSuthraFairyMeadows, and said publicly that it would not be a one off.
This page is that promise written down properly, so you can hold us to it.
On every departure
- Every group carries out everything it carries in, including waste that is not ours.
- Waste bags are issued to each vehicle and to each trekking group before departure.
- Refillable bottles rather than cases of single use plastic wherever water can be safely treated.
- The day one briefing covers waste, water and toilets, not just timings.
- Campsites are left cleaner than we found them. There is no exception to this.
- Rubbish comes down to somewhere it can actually be disposed of, rather than the nearest bin at a trailhead.
- Group sizes stay small enough that a trail can absorb us.
Clean up drives
#SaafSuthraFairyMeadows is the one we started, and the Fairy Meadows trail is still the one we care about most. It is not the only route with the problem, but it is the one we know best.
Guests who want to join a drive rather than simply avoid making a mess are genuinely welcome. Be warned that it is not a photo opportunity. You get a bag and gloves, and filling them at 3,300 metres is hard work. Tell us at the enquiry stage and we will build a morning of it into your itinerary.
If you are already up there without us
You do not need to be on one of our trips to help, and you do not need to tag us. Two things make a real difference:
- 1Carry out more than you brought in. One extra bottle each, across a season, is thousands of bottles.
- 2Tell the tea stall or guesthouse you carried it down. Demand from visitors is what eventually changes how waste is handled locally.
What we ask of you
Seven requests. None of them cost anything and all of them are easier than they sound.
This is the one that matters most and the one people find hardest. If the verge beside you is full of bottles, the instinct is that one more changes nothing. It is exactly how the Fairy Meadows trail got the way it did. Put it in your pack and carry it down.
Bottled water is the single largest source of litter on every route we run. Bring a refillable bottle. Your guide will tell you which sources are safe and will treat water for the group where needed.
Shortcutting a zigzag feels efficient and is how erosion scars start. On loose ground above the treeline a cut corner becomes a gully in one season of rain.
Villages downstream drink from these. Wash well away from water, use as little soap as possible, and pour waste water onto ground rather than into a channel.
Particularly women and children. A nod is enough, and being told no is a normal answer. The valleys are not a set and the people living in them are not part of the scenery.
Much of what looks like open meadow is somebody's grazing land or crop. Stay on tracks through cultivated ground, close gates behind you, and give herds room to pass.
No stones, no plants, no fossils, nothing from a shrine or a cairn. Photographs are the only thing that should leave with you.
Clean is not only about litter
A trail can be spotless and the tourism around it can still be extractive. If the money a trip generates leaves the valley the moment the trip ends, nobody living there has much reason to protect what visitors came to see.
- Guides, drivers, cooks and porters are hired from the valleys each trip passes through.
- We stay with locally owned guesthouses and huts wherever a genuine choice exists.
- Food and supplies are bought locally rather than trucked up from Lahore.
- Permits and community charges are paid properly and are inside your trip price.
Honest limits
Where we are not there yet
We are not going to print a leaf on this page and call ourselves green. Four things we cannot honestly claim to have fixed.
- 1Flights and long drivesEvery trip involves hundreds of kilometres of road, and for most guests an international flight. That is by far the largest part of the footprint and we do not currently offset it.
- 2Waste disposalInfrastructure in the north is limited. Carrying rubbish down beats leaving it on a trail, but it is not the same thing as solving where it ends up.
- 3Diesel jeepsThey are the only realistic way onto tracks like Raikot Bridge to Tato. No lower impact alternative exists today.
- 4One operator is not enoughUs cleaning a trail does not keep it clean. That takes the tea stalls, the jeep drivers and the other operators too, and it is slow work.
If you think we are getting something wrong, or you have walked a route of ours and found it in a poor state, tell us. That is more useful to us than a compliment.
Want a clean up morning in your trip?
Say so when you enquire and we will plan one in, on whichever route you are walking. It works particularly well with families travelling from abroad who want the trip to mean something more than photographs.