Indigenous Kokoda Adventures is the first wholly locally owned and operated tour operator on the Kokoda Track. We offer an opportunity for adventurous travelers to experience a completely authentic, life changing journey in a safe yet personally challenging way with fully trained porters, guides and historians.

Proceeds from tour fees go directly back to the villages and communities along the Kokoda Track putting more money directly where it is needed – into the hands of our people.

As a local company, we always try to work with other local businesses to ensure that all economic gains stay in our country and that foreign companies aren’t benefiting at our expense and the expense of Papua New Guinea. One of our goals is to provide our porters with a decent working environment, what we feel everyone should be provided, thereby providing a means for our porters and guides to better their lives and those of their families.

As Papua New Guinea is world renowned for spectacular scuba diving, snorkeling, surfing, kayaking and hot springs as well as the numerous cultural festivals that take place throughout our country, we are happy to put together a package for you to discover all that Papua New Guinea has to offer after your trek along Kokoda with us.

Our porters and guides are trained to ensure that on all of our treks we leave no trace behind. 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 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 and especially along the Kokoda Track. 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.

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.

Indigenous Kokoda Adventures provides fully trained senior guides and historians that always talk about where we are on the trail and about the villages that we travel through. The WWII history is particularly interesting and we always stop at important landmarks, monuments and at certain specific places (battle sites) along the track to provide our trekkers with our story about the war and our forefather's participation in it.

There are specific sites that we are happy to divert to off the track that will also provide additional opportunities to see war relics and battle grounds not easily seen from the main track.

Our porters and guides are also fully knowledgeable about the flora and fauna we see along our trek and go to great lengths to make sure our trekkers learn as much as they can about our home.

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 is currently in the final stages of completing 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 by putting more income directly into their hands. This provides our people with a greater ability to provide for their families and also to fund education for 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 and 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 and track 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 all rely on the track 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 | The Kokoda Track

Papua New Guinea | Indigenous Kokoda Adventures | The Kokoda Track

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