SOLO TRIPPING
VIDYA DESHPANDE 52 Founder, Soul Purpose Travel, Gurgaon
Always fascinated with discovering the unexplored, Vidya Deshpande, a former journalist decided to give up her job and start a company planning adventure trips for solo women travellers. Launched in 2012, and largely self-funded, Soul Purpose Travel took its first trip to Bharatpur, Rajasthan, and the group went to the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, did rafting and camped at a site far off from Shivpuri. “Most women don’t do the offbeat travel but you learn and discover more if you leave the bus,” says Deshpande, who also teaches at a private university in Greater Noida. Since then, she has taken a number of women, between 18 to 80, in groups of six to 15, to several destinations within India and overseas such as Andaman and Nicobar Islands where the focus was on diving; a road trip to Burma; a home stay in Ladakh with a local family learning to make momos; and whale watching and turtle hatchery in
Sri Lanka. She does about eight to 10 trips a year and the idea is to ‘live like a local’. “When women travel together, barriers get broken down easily,” she says. With a turnover of `40 lakh for FY 2016-2017, a 12 to 15-day long trip comes to `2 lakh a person which includes travel, food and stay and a weekend trip costs between `8,000 and `10,000 per person.