Trekking staff and porter welfare:
Sherpa Heritage Trails ensures safe, healthy, and fair working conditions for all our staff during all our tours, trekking & expeditions.

We offer our staff:

• An honest working wage, usually higher than the recommended wages by TAAN (Trekking Agencies Association Nepal).
• If necessary, we provide proper clothing, shoes, and gear for all staff. Or we provide an additional higher wage for buying gear before tour departures.
• Medical insurance and medical evacuation insurance. Free use of the First Aid kit.
• Our staff must have a minimum age of 16 years.
• We aim for a maximum of 25 kg carrying weight per porter. The carrying weight will never exceed 30 kg.

Respect local culture:

• We encourage our clients to encounter the local community. Believing that there is much to learn from each other’s cultures. Of course, therefore, we ask all those traveling with us to respect the culture and privacy of the local inhabitants.
• If you would like to take a photograph of a local, ask their permission first.

Protect the children:

• We strongly advise our clients not to hand out sweets, pens, balloons, or other gifts to local children. This encourages begging among children and their parents. If you want to help out, please donate your gifts to a local school. This will benefit more children as well as the local community.
• For photographing children, you need the consent of their parents or their guardians. In order to protect children, we ask you to refrain from posting photos or videos of them on social media.

Transport and energy reduction:

• All our clients and our staff travel locally CO2-emission free. We offset the emissions in a non-profit organization that invests in environmental projects to reduce the carbon footprint. We also encourage our clients to travel CO2-emission free from their home destinations.
• We prefer to use tourist buses for transport. If a tourist bus is not possible, we use private transport. The company that arranges private transport regularly renews its vehicles to the latest models.

• In our office, we do not use air-conditioning or electric heaters. Also, we conduct a switch-off policy for lights and computer hardware.

Preserve nature & safeguarding forests:

• We do not offer day tour helicopter flights or day tour mountain flights. These flights are air polluting, disturbing nature & wildlife, and annoying for trekkers who are enjoying the silent nature.
• If possible and safe, we offer filtered drinking water instead of bottled water. Single-use plastic bottles are a big waste problem in Nepal. With the use of water filters, you leave no waste of plastic bottles behind.
• At some high altitude locations, we brief the clients that water is scarce and request them to minimize the use of water.
• We encourage all our clients to minimize their rubbish and to leave no waste behind.
• During camping trek, we use kerosene stoves or gas stoves for cooking. We will never use wood for cooking. Cooking on wood means local forests are being cut, which means more erosion of the mountains with disastrous consequences.
• During camping trek, we do not use an open fire for the same reasons as mentioned above.

• During trekking and climbing we use locally managed guesthouses or community homestays.
• If possible we offer locally produced food to our clients.
• We encourage our clients the use solar shower and biodegradable soap.
• We encourage our clients to buy locally handcrafted souvenirs.