30 Mar Fair Trails in India – Join Explorer Tours in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh

Fair Trails is a business venture between Trail Angels, Ennovent and PILUM digital that promotes safe, responsible and inclusive travel experiences in the Himalayas. Launched in 2018, the venture successfully designed two new Fair Trail’s experiences in Nepal’s Manang and Chepang regions, which are open for exploration as of March 2022. Central to designing these travel experiences is promoting inclusive, sustainable development in the target destinations through fair partnerships with local tour operators, trekking agencies and other service providers such as homestays, lodges and shops.

With this approach in mind, Fair Trails has joined hands with Global Himalayan Expedition (‘GHE’) to launch trails in India’s Ladakh and Upper Siang regions. GHE leads impact expeditions in the Himalayan mountains of India and Nepal, where they engage travellers and businesses to build resilient communities through sustainable development and climate positive travel. Their travel is combined with carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral homestays. So far, they have electrified over 160 villages in the Himalayan region with the support of more than 1300 impact travellers while impacting 100,000 lives.  

“At GHE, our vision is to empower people to travel and explore the remotest parts of the Himalayas sustainably and enable travellers to leave behind a lasting legacy of their visit to the region. We are able to do this by integrating a setup of renewable energy infrastructure along with the expedition that can transform the lives of the local communities.”, says Jaideep Bansal, CEO, GHE. 

Fair Trails aims to change the future of travel which is demonstrable through its commitment to long-term sustainable change. GHE has established its commitment to the same goals as Fair Trails, which has led to a symbiotic relationship between the partners. While Fair Trails bring their global perspective and market access, GHE contributes extensive local experience in the target destinations and trail delivery expertise. 

“GHE is a pioneer for transformational tourism in India. Their approach to transformational travel is exceptional, and their expertise is outstanding. For Fair Trails, it is a unique opportunity to link our efforts for more sustainability in tourism and learn from each other”, says Günter Mussnig, Partner, Fair Trails.

Paras Loomba, Founder GHE, agrees. He adds, “In the sustainable tourism space, there is a strong need for more collaboration if we need to move the needle on the agenda. With that intent in mind, GHE decided to partner with Fair Trails as we believe that our mission and vision of leveraging tourism as a force for holistic development of the Himalayas is exactly in sync with what Fair Trails wants to achieve.”

Fair Trails, together with GHE, has launched two explorer tours in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

Explorer Tour – Arunachal Pradesh

 Arunachal Pradesh is located in the northeast corner of India, and this tour explores largely unknown paths of the Himalayas. Arunachal Pradesh forms the eastern, wild cornerstone of the Himalayas. With the flowing river, the Brahmaputra, and impenetrable jungle covers that borders this gorge, one sees ice-covered peaks above them all – the Namcha Barwa peak standing 7,782m high. This tour’s mission is to explore and design a new Fair Trail with the trekking and impact professionals from GHE and the experienced tourism expert and Fair Trails’ Explorer – Günter Mussnig. 

“Arunachal Pradesh is still a blind spot on the tourism map in Europe. This region is not widely known, although its natural and cultural heritage is outstanding. So there is a chance to launch tourism in a responsible and transformational way from scratch”, says Günter. “This Explorer Tour will be a real one, with a pure exploration character, because very little is known about the area we are targeting. The concept for Arunachal Pradesh will be to combine the experience design of an impressive trekking route leading through various levels of altitude with the impact design of an electrification expedition, which GHE has been successfully running for several years in Ladakh. We are thrilled to participate in the sustainable development of this mystic region”, he adds.

With this explorer tour, Fair Trails and GHE  want to explore possibilities on unknown paths, electrify the villages of around 140 ethnic groups, and lay the basis for a new Fair Trail. 

This truly exploratory expedition seeks participation from experienced adventure travellers who are open to discoveries. Stay tuned for the dates of this tour. Learn more about it here. 

Explorer Tour – Ladakh

GHE has been working on electrifying villages in Ladakh for several years now. As part of the tour with Fair Trails, we go on an exploratory expedition to the Changthang region in Eastern Ladakh. The mountainous region of Ladakh is located in northwestern India – well known for its massive mountains and the Tibetan Buddhist culture. While the capital Leh can easily be reached through its airport, the wild east of Ladakh is still unexplored and unknown to many travellers. Amid this unexplored area lies the Rumste region – the goal of this tour. 

This high-altitude trek is home to breathtaking scenery, ice-capped mountains, salt lakes, and we follow the footsteps of nomadic pastoralists and Buddhist monasteries.  It is also an Explorer Tour where participants explore and design a new trail along with trekking and impact professionals from GHE India and Fair Trails’ Explorer Peter Scheuch.

“The Explorer Tour to Ladakh will be a one of its kind impact adventure where the travellers will explore the length and breadth of Ladakh. The expedition will involve multiple days of trekking across unexplored routes and visits to some of the quaintest and most beautiful villages of the Himalayas”, adds Jaideep. 

As part of this expedition, Fair Trails and GHE  plan to install solar-powered kettles for the people of Changthang, which will improve the water supply and save valuable firewood in the future. The expedition members will also learn about sustainable practices and experience fully carbon-neutral homestays set up by GHE in the villages. These homestays use solar power, solar water heaters and greenhouses to grow organic food.  

Learn more about the tour here.

As we embark on a sustainable and fair restart after the devastating years of the pandemic, we welcome you to join our explorer tours. Head here to read more about the Fair Trails restart in 2022. 

Fair Trails has also introduced three additional Explorer Tours for 2022 in Nepal, West Balkans and a trip across the biosphere reserve Mur-Drava-Danube, otherwise known as the “Amazon of Europe”.