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If you think safaris and cruises are preserves of the very wealthy, think again. The eco-conscious on-line travel agent, www.responsibletravel.com, offers a range of enticing options at bargain prices (and tells you how to offset the carbon emissions caused by your flight). Take, for instance, its budget camping safari in Kenya, at £525 per person for seven days (excluding flights), staying in small, exclusive mobile camps in private conservancies from which you'll explore the Selenkay Conservation Area, Amboseli National Park (for views of Kilimanjaro), Kigio Conservancy, Lake Nakuru National Park and walk with Masai trackers. Clients have to pitch and strike their own tents, but a cook travels with the party, and there are staff to wash up and heat the water for showers. And given that groups on recent such safaris have seen elephant, lion, leopard, cheetah, Thompson's and Grant's gazelles, gerenuk, impala, eland, oryx, kudu, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, warthog, spotted and striped hyena, jackal, bat-eared fox, caracal, African wild, serval and genet cat, honey badger, aardvark, porcupine, zorilla, mongoose, bushbaby and dik-dik, it seems a small price to pay.
The company also offers a three-day traditional dhow cruise (£180 per person, from December to March) along the Kenyan coral reef from Mombasa to the Watamu Marine Nature Reserve and beyond, even across the Tana delta as far as Lamu (there's also a six-day version of the cruise for £300 per person, as long as there are four of you). Facilities on board are scant: you sleep on a mattress on deck, under the stars and a mosquito net, and dine on fresh reef fish caught from the boat; but there are two skippers and two crew members to look after you. (Just for the record, the emissions for a flight from London to Nairobi are calculated as 1.91 tonnes of carbon dioxide. According to Climate Care, a trust that campaigns 'to clear up pollution', it would cost £12.44 to offset the effects of the flight, and it invites passengers to make such a donation.)
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