gangAdhara's route

Background

  1. My and Ramya’s parents come from a background where monthly salary was the only source of income and was sufficient to take care of food, shelter and education. Travel was limited to summer vacation to grandparents home. But that life was very enjoyable. Lots of family time was the foundation stone.

Transition

  1. When we both started earning. We were clearly products of an education that focussed of employability. So I was in corporate for 17+ years, Ramya worked as a teacher for 10+ yrs.

  2. We both loved travel and our best bonding experiences was during driving in the night when everything had settled down, kids are sleeping and we get our time for great conversations. It took us little time to understand that and many years to prioritise that.

Lifestyle and travel prioritization

  1. When we started to prioritize travel. Obviously our jobs came in the way. Kids were too young and their school was accommodative of our travel. School was never an issue.

  2. In 2015, we both quit our jobs in Bangalore and tried to settle in Mysore. We asked for 30% less than bangalore salary and one designation less in Mysore. But Mysore didn’t have options for my domain of work.

  3. In 2016 joined Honeywell Aerospace in Hyderabad (family was in Mysore, closeby Inlaws house). And there I took up an individual contributor role and ensured I had personal time. Rarely I took office calls after 7pm and Saturday Sunday was entirely travel and family time. During this period, I joined an adventure club and started to train myself in rock climbing, rappelling and overnight camping. This helps us a lot even today.

  4. In a year, Family also moved to Hyderabad. We started travel to Northeast India since we loved that place. We didn’t realize that our #familytravel was getting noticed by others.

Travel business

  1. By 2018 we were getting known for family adventure and family travel. We never planned that one day we would start a travel and advneture business

  2. In 2018, Ramya encouraged me to quit my job and get into full time #familytravel and #familyadventure. I quit job and set up a small and meaningful travel business focussed on

    1. Experiential family travel in Northeast India. I travel with every family group
    1. FamilyAdvneture in and around Hyderabad. Rock climbing, Rappelling and Overnight Camping

  1. If our business again focusses on financial targets, then it is no use. This new life has to be more than earning a livelihood. It should be 100 times more enjoyable than the corporate lifestyle we left behind. We decided not to market or advertise our travel business and hence no website, no YouTube channel and no travel blog. Our business is successful inspite of no marketing. We focus on experiential travel for families who believe in responsible travel with kids and elders.

  2. 2018 experience.

    1. In 2018 we took 10 groups to Northeast, Sikkim and Bhutan.
    1. Trained more than 100 families in and around Hyderabad in Rock Climbing, Rappelling and Overnight Camping.
    1. Also provided international and domestic end to end travel packages like online portals MMT and Yatra
  1. In 2019 took 19 groups to Northeast and many more packages to international and other domestic destinations. Trained many families in outdoor adventure. God has been kind on us, Travel and Adventure business clicked. We don’t have any ambitions to scale up our travel or adventure business, we want it to remain small, meaningful and just sustain our financial needs for a decent living. We don’t want to use technology to scale it up and don’t want to open agencies all-over India. If we scale up, it will spoil our family time.

Pandemic slowdown

  1. In 2020, due to Pandemic. I have refunded all guests and we are sure, something or other will come our way and give us the required finances. We have surrendered to the bigger plan of God. We just focus on helping other families in Homeschooling, UnSchooling and RoadSchooling without any expectations.

  2. Ramya quit her teaching job in 2019 and started a very meaningful and personal journey as an online Traditional Yoga trainer. She keeps her engagements small and has no itch to scale into a business like setup.

  3. Lockdown has been a very easy period for us. Because we don’t have any expectation that life has to be treating us one way or the other. We are learning to take whatever comes our way with equanimity

  4. We both are open to conversations with other families who want to get out of the corporate world and weave a meaningful life.