Upcoming Trips
We are so excited to share our plans for trips that will be underway in 2026!
November 2026
Namibia
The success of our first mission fuels our momentum. One week after returning from our first trip , we were asked to return to Namibia. We are planning said return to Namibia for November 2026 with the Conservation Travel Foundation, Elephant-Human Relations Aid, and the Lion Rangers of Namibia. This next phase will allow us to reach deeper into rural areas where eye care is non-existent.
The Conservation Travel Foundation supports the indigenous Namibians living on the conservation land. Parts of this land are also where many safaris make one or two overnight stops, and the landscape is absolutely majestic. The local people are custodians of the land, and also our hosts at the lodges located within this protected area. In the Spring of 2026 T-Up visited three Conservancys in Damaraland, and in November will return to some and journey farther west to visit new lands. It is a beautiful combination and we are, once again, honored to add value to the lives of these native people.
Elephant-Human Relations Aid aims to find long-term sustainable solutions to the ever-growing problem of facilitating the peaceful co-habitation between the subsistence farmers, community members and the desert-adapted elephants. While most people agree that the elephants returning is a good thing, it also causes problems for the people that live in the areas to which elephants are returning. EHRA works to curb the conflict and promote constructive relationships between the elephants and communities living amongst them.
The Lion Rangers Program was founded in northwest Namibia at the request of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism in late 2017. The founders were charged with developing an effective community-based lion conservation program to limit human-lion conflict within communal farming lands and for the conservation of the desert-adapted lion population. In the rugged Kunene Region, there is often no substitute for foot-based patrol, particularly into mountainous areas where vehicles cannot travel safely. Because lions, prey, and livestock can trek into remote, hard-to-reach areas, the Lion Rangers must do so as well. The Lion Rangers have a deep knowledge of their respective areas, performing fixed-route standardized patrols, and ad-hoc patrols as needed.
