Our 2018 Extravagant Yak Tibet tour with Prairie Digital Media and Photographer Ron Nickel was a huge success. Check out this photo journal of highlights of the trip.

This is our 4th year working with Leman International School (LIS). At the beginning of April, seven students, three teachers, and two guides from Extravagant Yak took an adventure to an area in Eastern Tibet. Although the tour was short with a few challenges, they were willing participants, and found ways to give back to their host communities through partnership with a local school and a few small businesses.

We've made the cover of Action Asia Magazine! The January/February 2018 issue has an amazing 10-page article, with words and photos from our clients Ryan Stuart and Ryan Creary, highlighting our exhilarating (and gruelling) Mountain Biking Backcountry Tibet tour.

Extravagant Yak has been in a season of saw sharpening this month. We all passed our AHA First Aid and CPR certification. We are also now qualified to facilitate the Duke of Edinburgh award for the British family of schools. And we also hosted our own tour guide training for our growing network of Tibet tour guides. 

We are the best gatekeepers to the Roof of the World for all of our global friends. We take that privilege very seriously. And we are committed to having as much fun doing it as we can. Because when we have fun, our clients have fun. So, how do we build a culture of learning, excellence-in-service and fun among our staff and tour guides? Tsering Tso found the answer this fall.

I was recently the driver and guide for an Extravagant Yak Tibet Photo Tour and learned some interesting things about hosting photographers. They are a unique breed of traveller. They appear less likely to feel cultural stress. Though I’m not an expert on the subject, in my thirteen years of cross-cultural living, I’ve observed that there are varying degrees of culture stress, from PTSD-type emotional trauma on the one end (very rare) to wanting to take more frequent naps on the other (super common).

We ran our third annual photography workshop tour in Tibet with Prairie Digital Media students from Canada and the United States. This year we used our Tibet Wild Frontier itinerary through Eastern Tibet and it was a huge success.

Our expertise in Tibetan culture and travel along with our value for empowering the communities with which we work attracts various organizations focused on service and education such as Beanstalk International School, Malvern College and the Chengdu Rotary Club. Recently, we have connected with these organizations who are inspired by our stories and desire to provide opportunities for their students and members to experience our services and hospitality.

In our low season, we always travel to different Tibetan areas to survey the newest travel-service businesses available and to develop new itineraries. This time our development trip to Shangri-la was a successful. We met local entrepreneurs and build relationships with them. We visited local restaurants, hotel owners and guides.