enjoy tour

A British travel company has led the first camping and hiking trip into North Korea, opening the tourism market to the world's most secretive country. Ten travellers spent nine nights in North Korea, with the highlight the "pretty testing" hiking on the slopes of Mount Myohyang and Mount Kumgang, according to Sarah Davies, of Beijing-based Koryo Tours. "This was the first time a camping trip has been allowed to go into North Korea," she said. "When we first asked the tourism authorities, they thought camping was an unusual idea because there were plenty of hotels in these areas anyway, but they didn't stand in our way." Hiking and camping are not popular hobbies in North Korea and there is little infrastructure in place at present. The hikers had to clear their own camp sites each night and gather wood for fires. That part of North Korea has such beautiful scenery that so few people know about," Ms Davies said. The group walked around 20 miles each day and saw some of the North's most secluded natural sights, including Kumgang Waterfall and Lake Sam Il Po. Koryo Tours was set up in 1993 by Nick Bonner, who is originally from Cheshire, and is one of the very few outside companies that is permitted to enter the country with foreign visitors. "We are always trying to push the envelope in terms of what we can do in the form of responsible tourism in North Korea," he told The Telegraph. "We don't just want to do the run-of-the-mill stuff of the sights in Pyongyang or the Demilitarised Zone." See more...See more: www.telegraph.co