Slowness over speed
We plan for lingering. Time to get lost. Time for a second cup of chai.
About WandaraWe're fourteen
We're fourteen
humans who still
pick up the phone.
A studio, not an agency. A philosophy, not a package. This is how Wandara works — and why we've never scaled.
Our storyOne notebook,
One notebook,
eleven years
of pages.
It started with two friends in a quiet Lisbon café in the autumn of 2014. Inês had just resigned from a travel magazine. Kenji had come back from three months in Hokkaido with a notebook full of names, small hotels, slow roads.
The frustration was the same: travel had become a checklist. Ten cities in twelve days. Restaurants booked by rank. Experiences packaged and sold by volume. The craft had drained out of it.
We started Wandara to put the craft back in — slowly, stubbornly, one human at a time. No algorithms. No mass bookings. No upsells. Just someone who's been there, planning for someone going there.
"The best trips don't feel designed. They feel found."
What we believeFour rules we've
Four rules we've
never broken.
Craft over formula
No templates. Every route drawn from zero for you, by a human.
Place over product
We ask what a place needs from us — then we answer with our bookings.
People over transactions
Guides become friends. Friendships outlast the trip. That's the whole point.
Our milestonesA decade in
A decade in
five chapters.
- 2014
Born in a Lisbon café
Two friends, a battered notebook, a shared frustration: travel had become a checklist.
- 2016
First 100 travellers
A quiet launch on Hunza + Swat. Word of mouth did the rest.
- 2019
Opened local studios
Lahore, Reykjavík, CDMX. Guides became partners, not contractors.
- 2021
Re-invest 2% pledge
Every booking funds the places we love — schools, reefs, footpaths.
- 2024
14 humans, 128 places
Still fewer than 200 trips a year. Still one human per itinerary.
The humansFourteen
Fourteen
obsessives.
Photographers, guides, writers, architects. Spread across nine countries. All of us travel-sick, in the best way.
Inês Carvalho
Founder · Lisbon
Former travel editor. Has eaten pastel de nata in 47 countries.
Kenji Watanabe
Co-founder · Kyoto
Photographer. Believes the best stories happen at 5am.
Amara Okoye
Head of Africa · Accra
Fourth-generation hotelier. Knows every market trader by name.
Felix Mendoza
LatAm · Buenos Aires
Mountain guide turned planner. Fluent in four languages and silence.
Siobhan Kelly
Nordics · Reykjavík
Aurora chaser. Will find you a hot spring no one has written about.
Arjun Bhatia
South Asia · Jaipur
Architect by training. Obsessed with doorways, courtyards, light.
"We don't sell trips. We sell the space between them — the hours you'll remember."Inês Carvalho · Founder
128
Places
14k+
Travellers hosted
4.96
Average rating
11yrs
On the road