The Blue Yonder (TIES Business Member) sponsored an eco-holiday trip “River Nila Holiday” last year that was featured on TIES ecoAuction. Spending days along the River Nila in the Malabar region of Kerala, and enjoying uniquely local experiences, the trip offers travelers an opportunity to get to know Kerala’s great local heritage sites and culinary highlights in an intimate way. Myriam and Titou, who participated in the River Nila Holiday journey with The Blue Yonder in 2009, share their Kerala experiences…

By Cynthia Ord, Outdoor Albania – In Albania, around 750,000 bunkers form a gray mushroom network across the country. This drab legacy of recent communism presents a creative challenge today. Albanians are transforming the bunkers into more purposeful structures, often with tourism in mind. Built of thick cement and iron, the bunkers are phone booth-sized subterranean fortresses with rifle windows and cement dome roofs above ground. Communist dictator Enver Hoxha built them in the 1970s in paranoia of nuclear warfare and xenophobia toward the rest of the world.

Raw Wildlife Encounters was born out Jessica McKelson’s passion for, and dedication to the conservation of Indonesia. One of the earth’s few remaining biodiversity hotspots, Tangkahan is home to some of the world’s most endangered wildlife including Sumatran Tigers, Orang-utans, Asia Rhinos and Asian Elephants. The region is perched on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park, an area that has been disseminated by illegal logging for timber and to make way for oil palm plantations.

By Natasha Robinson

Aivar Ruukel has made quite a name for himself in ecotourism, particularly in his native Estonia, where he grew up in the midst of the country’s largest pristine wilderness: Soomaa. Roughly translated as ‘Land of Bogs,’ the area is, in Ruukel’s words, “a vast complex of raised bogs, wet alluvial forests with fens, transition mires and unregulated rivers with flood-plain and wooded meadows.”

By Michelle Nowak, Farm Stay USA/ The Farm Stay Project

Agritourism and farm stays are common in Europe, particularly Italy, where they play an important role in preserving rural food traditions and protecting small farm livelihoods. In the United States, however, farm stays aren’t as well known. Two organizations, The Farm Stay Project and Farm Stay U.S., aim to change that – we’re working to spread the word about farm stays in the USA.

By Eva Mossberg, TIES Travel Ambassador
Temuco, located 670 km south of Santiago, is the capital of the Arauncanía Region of Chile. The name means “water of temu”; “temu” is the name of a tree used by the Mapuche Indians for medicinal purposes. It is a town with poetic history: this is where Nobel Poet Pablo Neruda lived as a young man before travelling away from his disapproving father to Asia and beyond to further his career as a writer.

Ever wondered what it’s like to take the plunge and set up your own eco-lodge? We talked to Earl, one of the co-owners of El Coco Lodge in northern Nicaragua to discover the reality behind that dream. El Coco Loco was a pipeline dream for three Canadians – Ben, Earl and Jamie – for 3 years, and finally opened its doors in January 2010. The lodge has been fast growing a reputation as one of the new breed adventure choices.

The principal attraction of the small Baltic republic of Estonia is its UNESCO World Heritage Site capital city of Tallinn. Beyond the city limits and off the beaten track, however, lie several less-well-known pleasant surprises, like Estonia’s Summer Capital, better known as Pärnu, and the surrounding Soomaa National Park. The best time of year to visit Soomaa (meaning ‘land of bogs’ in Estonian) is during what locals call the ‘fifth season’, a springtime phenomenon during which water levels can rise up to five meters higher than normal and flood an area of 175 square kilometres.

Within the past few weeks, over 40 (and counting) companies and organizations from around the world – representing a diverse range of industry segments and interest areas, from urban travel to wildlife safari, from international companies to community-based groups – have gathered in support of the Local Travel Movement, a new global initiative promoting the local way of travel – getting in touch with the local people and seeing a place like a local.

By Laura Burns – The most rewarding experiences I’ve had while travelling have always been moments where I have truly immersed myself in the local culture, and there is no better way to get involved with the locals than volunteering. In fact, voluntourism has become an increasingly popular trend, and travellers everywhere are seeking out ways to give back to the places they visit.