There comes a time in most adventure travelers’ lives when cities and modern conveniences cease to offer any sense of satisfaction. In fact, they start to contribute to a vague sense of dis-satisfaction. Once that part of your adventure travel brain has been ignited, malls, coffee shops and busy city streets no longer hold the same appeal.

If this sounds like you, consider a truly off the beaten track trip with Indigenous Kokoda Adventures. While Indigenous Kokoda Adventures specializes in guiding trekkers along the Kokoda Track, we also offer an opportunity for truly adventurous souls to continue their adventure with us after their trek has been completed and to engage with local people from places not usually visited by tourists.

Envision this: your trek along Kokoda has been completed. You are sitting with your trek mates, exhausted, full of aches and pains but exhilarated by the amazing feat you have all just accomplished. You are enjoying a meal (and quite possibly a cold beverage) sharing your favourite (or least favourite!) moments of the past few days.

On most trips, this would be it. Your adventure would be over and the personal physical challenge would have been met and exceeded. There is that sense of ‘fait accompli’ and then, you would be heading home the next day. But Indigenous Kokoda Adventures can make sure that your adventure is not finished!

Now envision this: After one day in Port Moresby to regroup, or sleep or soak in a hot tub, how does climbing aboard a helicopter and flying into a remote Indigenous village sound? A village so remote that most tourists wouldn’t even know how to get there and rarely have an opportunity to visit. A village so remote that you have to be flown in and out by helicopter.

Indigenous Kokoda Adventures can arrange this custom adventure for you. It is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience a remote Indigenous village in Papua New Guinea where western culture has not yet infiltrated and the old ways of doing things are still alive and well.

Where else would you have the opportunity to witness firsthand and experience life in a remote village with no other tourists? You would be there living among the villagers, eating, sleeping and learning their ways (with one of our guides of course). Daily ventures through the jungle discovering mountain caves with ancient drawings from early civilizations and magnificent waterfalls are some of the daily discoveries awaiting.

If the adventure travel bug has bitten and the need to travel to unknown shores is gnawing at you, consider letting us put together a trip for you. It can be arranged as an add-on after a trek along the Kokoda Track, or as a shorter custom trip. These trips are of a shorter duration and only accommodate a maximum of 6 people so large group tours are not available and are only offered a few times a year. This is to ensure that our visits do not negatively impact the villages or degrade the integrity of the local culture.

If this sounds like something you would like to experience, we would be very happy to discuss this with you. Please email us at info@indigenouskokodaadventures.com for more details and we can start your PNG adventure that will take you off the beaten track.

Our porters and guides are trained to ensure that on all of our treks we leave no trace behind wherever we are going. What we carry in we carry out. We are especially aware of the sensitive nature of our home and every effort is made to maintain a distance from any wildlife when viewing in the wild (ie. birds of paradise) so their natural habitat is not compromised by our travels back and forth along the track.

We recommend that all trekkers refrain from using any regular soap or cleaning liquids for washing as our rivers are part of our home and our supply of drinking water and require that only biodegradable soap and toilet paper are used on our treks.

Keeping our villages and the track, trails and terrain that connects them in pristine condition is a priority for us and we always convey this to our guests.

Indigenous Kokoda Adventures directly supports our people by providing a competitive wage as well as covering employment benefits that most of the working world takes for granted but are not as readily provided to porters and guides in Papua New Guinea. IKA ensures that more income is put into our people's hands thereby allowing them to save more for their children's education and also contribute to the upkeep of their homes and villages.

Our foundation, the IKA Foundation, also directly supports the children along the track and in certain outlying areas by providing scholarships for post primary education. Education is not available in the villages beyond Grade 8 and parents are responsible for sending their children to the larger cities for high school and university. Most cannot afford this and this perpetuates the cycle of poverty. The IKA Foundation hopes to provide a means for parents to be able to better the lives of their children, thereby bettering the communities and Papua New Guinea.

We believe that the key to poverty reduction lies in education. We have a fully registered charitable foundation set up and it is specifically designed for this purpose. Our foundation, the IKA Foundation, assists in the furtherance of post primary education for the children of Kokoda and in certain outlying areas by way of scholarships.

Our goals consist of ensuring universal education for both boys and girls, thereby empowering the girls and women in our program and providing ongoing mentoring and support for our students.

Our ambassador, Ms. Yalinu Poya, is from Papua New Guinea and has recently completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. We are honoured to have her as our IKA Foundation Ambassador. She is an amazing role model for not only the children of Kokoda, but for all the children of Papua New Guinea.

Our top 5 sustainability achievements are:

1. Directly supporting our people along the Track and in the villages and local communities by putting more income directly into their hands. This provides our people with a greater ability to provide for their families and also to help with educating their children.

2. Directly supporting our porters, guides and historians by providing needed basic benefits not always available to the local people but quite often taken for granted by people from more developed countries.

3. We encourage our guides, porters and historians as well as the villagers to share their culture with our trekkers. We believe the best way to connect and to maintain a culture is in the sharing of cultural information. This creates a greater understanding of other people and their cultures that our trekkers take home with them.

4. We maintain an absolute 'what you carry in you carry out' motto. Our porters and guides are adamant about keeping the villages clear of garbage and debris. This is home for us and we do not want litter left behind by anyone.

5. The people along Kokoda and in the outlying villages we travel to all rely on the track and the other trails to be accessible and the bridges needed to cross the rivers to be in good, safe working order. Our workers always take it upon themselves to make sure that everything along the track is safe and while it may not be the type of bridge that you are used to crossing at home, rest assured it will sustain the crossing and get everyone to the other side safe and sound.

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Papua New Guinea | Indigenous Kokoda Adventures | Off The Beaten Track

Papua New Guinea | Indigenous Kokoda Adventures | Off The Beaten Track

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