Bulgaria to Turkey small group tour

Planet

Environment and Wildlife

On this 12 days Balkan tour You will discover the charm of the Balkan peninsula with unique traditions and customs in combination of great local cuisine with delicious traditional food.

As we visit UNESCO World Heritage sites, tombs, restricted national parks, monuments, churches, castles etc., support local projects to conserve the cultural and geographical heritage.
All the walking routes used in this holiday have been existing, marked and regularly maintained trails in collaboration with local authorities and local communities. This helps a lot people use the intended routes and reduces any possible damage to the surrounding areas.
Therefore, in this holiday by using local services/facilities we donated to the local communities to maintain the trails, churches, monuments, plant trees, place new bird boxes and other wildlife in the region.

Our trip leader guides and briefs the guest on the local customs and general courtesy and behave appropriately. Also our local trip leaders (certified guide) considered it of great importance to give correct information on how to avoid detriment to the natural environment and wildlife, avoid human footprint, be environmentally friendly and be a very positive example for the locals.

Usually, the most places we pass through have recycling options, so we encourage everyone to use them for specific items. When this is not possible, we carry back all rubbish at the hotel and throw it in the correct waste bins.
We encourage our guests and the owners of the accommodations to have good waste management (i.s. water waste, plastic bags and bottles). We explain to our guests the need for water conservation worldwide and advise them on how to minimise their water waste.

Carbon Reduction

In this tour our guests will taste different local food Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish, they will enjoy the local hospitality, taste of seasonal deliciously prepared food and thousands of years of tradition of wine production.

Town of Melnik (Bulgaria) takes you through 5,000 years of tradition and history of winemaking. In the local vineyards, you will be enchanted by the romance of authentic architecture, culture and old traditions and environmentally friendly way of wine production.
The legend tells of the locals – the Thracian tribe Maedi of which the legendary rebel Spartacus originated that became famous in Europe for its best wine.

Town of Canakkale (Turkey) near the ancient city of Troy with thousands of years of historical heritage is ranked among the top 10 cities in Turkey in terms of good agricultural practices in production. Within the scope of these agricultural practices, more than 20 crops such as olives, peaches, apples, tomatoes, nectarines, grapes and cherries are grown. So whenever we visit the amazing city we are glad to taste the freshly picked seasonal food.

In the Island of Thassos our guest will enjoy not only of the greenest island with sandy beaches and turquoise sea water in Greece but we have the opportunity of tasting seasonal locally produced honey, almonds, walnuts, olives (such as the local Throumba variety which has a protected designation of origin), olive oil, and wine.

All of our hotels/partners, restaurants, coffee shops visited during this program have great policies for reducing pollution, use of renewable energy such as solar panels, windmill for electric production, natural springs of thermal mineral water for heating and offer the guests seasonal food, vegan and/or vegetarian dishes with the ingredients from the local farms, which helps a lot for the local economy and stimulates the local communities.

Our fleet, the company, is strongly determined to use environmentally friendly and electric vehicles for the transfers and where possible public transport, which we believe helps a lot to reduce the carbon footprint.
Therefore, most of our day activities are by human powered transport (Walking), avoiding using as many vehicles as possible.

Everything starts at home. As a company orientated to the green tourism, we maintain strong recycling policies, energy conservation measures, avoiding using paper tickets and paper advertising materials to all of our activities therefore our partners in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey are with the same vision, which helps to of reduce as much as possible the pollutants and be very positive examples to our guests and local communities.

People

This tour is full of history, culture, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, galleries, museums and places with unique costumes and cosines. We visit the sites with hundreds of years history such as ancient city of Troy, town of Assos in Turkey great royal tomb of Philipe of Macedon, town of Kavala, town of Thessaloniki, Thassos Island in Greece, town of Sofia, town of Plovdiv and listed in the Guinness book of world Records sites in Bulgaria.

We provide all our guests with an information pack in advance regarding the local rules or guidelines that will affect them.
Our trip leader believes that the best way to culturally explore the three Balkan countries is to engage with local people, investing in traditional gifts, local produce, taste of authentic local dishes and to feel that our presence benefits the local economy.
Part of the income from visitors is used to maintain footpaths, churches, local museums and cultural monuments from being damaged.

Our experienced local tour guides in the three different countries have a lot to share with our guests regarding the local nature, traditions and history.

This small group tour has a maximum of 18 participants, meaning that we have a low impact on the environments and communities we visit and are able to ensure that we do not disrupt or lead to the displacement of local people. The small number also allows us to stay in unique, environmental friendly locally run hotels.

In this 12 days Balkan tour we make sure that we are working with partners who have the same vision as us, help develop the local economy and usefully reduce the pollution.
As this program is on HB all suppliers and ingredients come from the local farms and mostly use the seasonal food, agricultural and livestock production of their region.