By Lieke van Leeuwen

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Laura Payne, co-founder of Outdoor Albania and a local travel activist, believes that travelling is all about meeting and connecting with locals and experiencing their culture – bringing real economic benefits to those who need it most.

The village of Thethi is found in an incomparably beautiful setting

Laura paid her first visit to Albania six years ago and immediately fell in love with the country’s spectacular scenery. She visited beautiful deserted beaches in the south of the nation, where she got to know the passionate people, and rugged mountain ranges in the north, where she connected with hospitable locals. Travelling through the country she saw the enormous potential for tourism that Albania had and was particularly drawn to the Albanian Alps. Realising that most residents would not have the means to promote Albania’s outdoor opportunities to travellers from abroad, she decided that she wanted to do something for the locals.

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Posted under Albania, General, countries, responsible organisations, responsible travel, responsible traveller

By Sylvia Mohabir

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Fed up with the endless grey and drizzle of a London winter and the monotony of my office job, I decided it was time to finally make my African dream a reality. For some time, I had been entertaining thoughts of roaming the Kenyan savannah on a big-game safari, but I was also keen to get to know the country and its people on a more intimate level, not merely scrape the surface as a package tourist.

Sylvia dabbles in some gardening at the Odula family's farm on Rusinga Island, Kenya. The farm's main crop is maize, which features prominently in the local cooking.

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Posted under General, Kenya, countries, responsible organisations, responsible travel, responsible traveller

By Ashley Hiemenz

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A year had passed since my last holiday. I had lost patience with the monotony of working in the virtual world combined with the sequential rainy days of winter in Hanoi (Vietnam), where I live. It was time to escape into the wild embrace of nature and reignite my spirit for adventure. I needed a place where I could take my true form with a backpack, sneakers, reckless abandon and unruly hair. I knew where this place was; it had been calling me for my entire life. On my 26th birthday, I booked tickets to Nepal.

Ashley (right) and her friend Laura tinted orange at the bisket jatra celebration for the Nepalese New Year in Thimi, outside Kathmandu

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Posted under General, Nepal, countries, local tips, responsible traveller

An interview with Kate Ward and Chimwemwe Siyabu of The Responsible Safari Company of Malawi

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Every month, we delve into the travel experiences of people in the extended WHL Group network. This month we talk to Kate Ward and Chimwemwe Siyabu, both of whom work for The Responsible Safari Company, the whl.travel local connection, based in Blantyre, Malawi.

Kate (right) and Dom (centre) own and run The Responsible Safari Company in Malawi, together with their colleague, Chimwemwe (left)

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Posted under General, Malawi, countries, interview, local tips, responsible organisations, responsible travel, responsible traveller

By Brian Hoeniger

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The Tour d’Afrique is an annual transcontinental bicycling odyssey that starts at the pyramids near Cairo, Egypt, in January, and then traverses 10 countries and every kind of road surface imaginable before spinning into Cape Town, South Africa, some four months and 11,800 kilometres later. It attracts nomadic souls and cycling enthusiasts of all ages and abilities, from triathletes to retirees.

With the Sphinx bearing witness, the Tour d'Afrique riders assemble near Cairo, Egypt, in preparation for the first kilometre on day 1 of their four-month, 11,800-kilometre trans-African pedal (photo by Brian Hoeniger)

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Posted under Botswana, Egypt, General, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, responsible travel, responsible traveller, whl.travel newsletter

The Wanderlust World Guide Awards (formerly known as the Paul Morrison Guide Awards) are held every year to recognise the very best of the world’s tour-guide community. This year the Wanderlust team received over 1,000 nominations from which they created a shortlist of the eight guides they felt were most deserving of this distinguished award.
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Posted under General, awards, countries, responsible travel, responsible traveller

By Navin M. Shrestha

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Ever since its establishment, Outdoor Himalayan Treks (OHT), while providing top-notch tourism services to travellers in Nepal, has always maintained corporate social responsibility and community development as its primary background concerns. The Orphan and Street Children Rehabilitation Centre, which OHT has been actively supporting since 2005, is just one excellent example.

Mr Makhan Babu Pariyar (in the middle in the back), founder of the Orphan and Street Children Rehabilitation Centre of Kathmandu, Nepal, stands with the Centre's children and volunteers

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Posted under Nepal, countries, responsible organisations, responsible travel, responsible traveller, whl.travel newsletter

By Ben P Jones

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My passion for Morocco came to me over 10 years ago during a trip in the south of the country. Since then I have been back many times, but the short visits ended one cold, wet, December afternoon in London when I received a call from a new contact asking me to spend a week taking photos for him in Marrakech. Twelve hours after my arrival, one mint tea and a drive through the city, I had already decided it was time to leave London for a new base. Having worked for a Brazilian magazine, I considered Brazil, but I am very glad I went for Morocco.

A local market in Marrakech. After the government ordered that it to be closed down, informal retailers came from across the region to continue selling their produce. Photograph by Ben P Jones.

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Posted under General, Morocco, countries, local tips, responsible traveller, whl.travel newsletter

By Maureen Valentine

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The Church of the Divine Providence in Avenue Providencia of Santiago, Chile, suffered structural damage from the tremors. This photo was taken a few hours after the earthquake. (Photo by Santiago Vanegas)

At 3:30 in the morning on Saturday, 27 February, I was sitting at my dining room table in my home in central Santiago, Chile, with friends having some drinks… when something peculiar started to happen. My house started to shake. There was a split second when I thought “Am I crazy or is the table moving?” and then I locked eyes with one of my friends with a mutual communication of “GET OUT!”

Everyone jumped up and started running toward the door, screaming as the walls continued to move for an excruciating 90 seconds. The entire neighbourhood flooded into the street for fear of their houses collapsing.

Throughout the early morning of the 27th and the rest of the day, we continued to feel aftershocks. There were so much that sometimes we couldn’t tell if it was our imagination or the ground was actually moving. Nevertheless, by midday, our electricity and internet access had been restored, which gave me the opportunity to find out exactly what had happened and if it was something my family back in North Carolina would see in the international news. I quickly discovered that the earthquake had measured 8.8 on the Richter scale and a top news story worldwide.

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Posted under Chile, General, countries, responsible traveller, whl.travel newsletter

On 8 February, the body of Chrystel Cancel was positively identified, nearly a month after the devastating earthquakes in Haiti levelled the Hotel Montana on top of her. She had only had just arrived in Port-au-Prince. We pay tribute to her here because she was a trusted part of our family.

Chrystel Cancel grew up in Toulouse, France. After earning both a Bachelors and Masters degree in Business Administration from the University of Toulouse, Chrystel graduated from the University of Paris in 1999 with another Masters in Political Science, specialising in developing countries. A passion for travel, adventure and international development led her to Washington, DC, where she obtained a Masters in Tourism Administration from the George Washington University in 2006.

Chrystel spent the majority of her career as a dedicated sustainable tourism consultant leaving her lasting legacy on a variety of projects around the world.

We will never be able to give voice to the thousands of people Chrystel touched, both directly and indirectly. We hope that a few short remarks from some of the people with whom she worked will impart a sense of her spirit, her character… and the empty space we now feel in her absence.

See below for short tributes to Chrystel from:

• Len Cordiner, CEO of the WHL Group
• Zachary Rozga, CEO of WHL Consulting
• Simon Jones, Vice President of Solimar International
• Sandrine-Pia Casto, General Manager of Tucaya Panama

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Posted under General, opinion, responsible organisations, responsible traveller, whl.travel newsletter