To mark 20 years in Asia, andBeyond has unveiled five small-group journeys for 2028. Each is led by a scientist, naturalist, historian or filmmaker who has spent decades in the landscape.
Somewhere above Ladakh’s Rumbak Valley, a snow leopard may well be watching the trail. Whether you ever spot it depends a great deal on who’s walking beside you. On one journey in 2028, that will be the scientist who spent decades working out how these cats survive here.
That’s the idea behind a new collection from andBeyond. The company is marking 20 years in Asia with five Limited Edition Small Group Journeys, each designed around a guide – a naturalist, a wildlife scientist, a historian and a documentary maker – whose life’s work is the landscape you’re travelling through. Departures run in 2028 and will be limited in number.
“People often think the rarest part of a journey is the species, the sighting or the place itself,” says Suhail Gupta, managing director of andBeyond Asia. “In reality, the rarest thing is perspective.”
Five Journeys, Five Lifelong Fascinations
The snow leopard expedition belongs to Dr Raghu Chundawat, a pioneering wildlife scientist whose research changed how snow leopard ecology in India is understood. He stays with guests throughout, tracking through the Rumbak Valley and reading the mountains as one connected system of prey, terrain, climate and the communities who share them.
In Nepal, naturalist Harsha Jayaramaiah leads a journey from Kathmandu to Jaubari in the eastern Himalaya. He’s spent more than two decades studying the subcontinent’s mammals, birds and reptiles. In Jaubari, local trackers help search for red panda before the group heads west to the grasslands of Bardia National Park to look for its acclaimed tigers.
Private guide Toby Sinclair, of andBeyond, hosts two of the five journeys. Rediscovering Monkey Kingdom returns to Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa, the ancient royal capital where generations of toque macaques were observed for the Disneynature film. It then continues through Wilpattu National Park, Sigiriya, Anuradhapura and Kandy.
Sinclair knows the filmmakers and researchers behind the film, so guests can learn far more than what appeared on screen. He also leads a journey down the full length of the Ganges, from where the river forms at Devprayag, through Varanasi and on to Kolkata. Along the way he draws on his time as an associate producer on the BBC series Ganges.
The fifth trip trades wildlife for history. Historian and author Rudrangshu Mukherjee joins a cruise along the Lower Ganges from Patna to Kolkata and will offer insight into the river as a corridor of trade, faith and empire as guests cruise past sacred Buddhist sites, colonial trading centres and riverside communities.
Twenty Years on the Ground
andBeyond’s Asia story began in 2006 with Taj Safaris, a partnership with Taj Hotels. It started at Mahua Kothi in Bandhavgarh and grew into what the company describes as India’s first circuit of wildlife lodges, spanning Bandhavgarh, Pench, Panna and Kanha.
In 2011 and 2012, andBeyond supported the translocation of gaur back into Bandhavgarh, where the species had disappeared. Local teams followed in Bhutan in 2010, Sri Lanka in 2012 and Kathmandu in 2014. In 2023, andBeyond Punakha River Lodge in Bhutan became the company’s first owned lodge in Asia.
In places where the best sightings go to those who know where to look, the person beside you may turn out to be the highlight of the trip.
