A road running through the mountains of the Nubra valley, Ladakh

Sahib Salaam — an old way of saying hello

I don't sell holidays.
I plan one, and then
I come with you.

The greeting the company is named after has mostly gone out of use. I kept it because I kept the manner that went with it: you are a guest, and I will take the trouble.

Manganiyar musicians playing in the Rajasthan desert

Placeholder photography. Manganiyar musicians · a haveli courtyard · the table. Credits at the foot of the page.

Founded byManavendra Singh

Based inBhopal and New Delhi — and the hills and the deserts

Travelling since2003

Group sizeTwo to twenty, and beyond if you insist

Fixed departuresNone. Not one.

There is no brochure here, because there is nothing to choose from.

Every other operator will hand you a list and ask which one you'd like. I don't have a list. I have a handful of zones I've been going back to for years, opinions about them I'm happy to argue, and the time to build something around what you're actually after.

So you tell me who's coming, roughly when, and what you can't do without — the wine at dinner, the walk before breakfast, your mother's knees. I plan the rest around that. And then I travel it with you, start to finish. I'm a co-traveller, not a tour guide. I'd rather be there than send you a voucher and a phone number.

Who I am, and who I bring — because a promise with no name attached is worth nothing.

It's a slower way to work and it doesn't scale, which is the point.

How it works

Three conversations and then we go.

First — you talk

Who's coming, when you're free, what you've loved before and what you quietly hated. No form can get this out of you, so we speak instead. An hour, usually.

Then — I write it

A plan on paper, with the reasoning shown: why this village and not that one, why we're there on a Thursday, who I want to bring along. You push back. I rewrite it. Twice is normal.

Then — we travel

I come with you. I carry the problems so you don't meet them: the permits, the driver who didn't turn up, the rain. You get to be a guest for the whole of it.

The Gadisar tank at Jaisalmer, with its pavilions and steps

Bundelkhand, as soldThree nights

Bundelkhand, as I do itTen nights. Same three names.

Shortest I'll agree toLong enough to arrive twice in the same place

And in LadakhThe extra days stop being a preference and become the safety margin

And in the TharThey buy you less — and a date set by the moon

The one thing I'll be stubborn about

Time at hand is a prerequisite for a good time.

Nearly every disappointing holiday I've watched was disappointing for the same reason: not enough days for the number of names on the list. Not the wrong hotel, not the wrong season — just too little time, spent driving.

Every place worth going to has a right hour, and the right hour is almost never the one a tight itinerary can reach. Sculpture that is unreadable at noon and extraordinary at seven. A river that is a different river before eight. Twenty minutes of light on a row of cenotaphs. Fit four towns into six days and you will meet none of those hours except by accident.

So I plan long, and I leave afternoons with nothing in them — which isn't slack, it's the part people describe afterwards. If you're short of days, tell me at the start and I'll cut a name rather than thin all of them.

The western group of temples at Khajuraho

Dancers at the Hornbill Festival, Nagaland

Places, zones, experiences

I don't do places. I do zones, and the experiences inside them.

A zone is a stretch of country that makes sense as one story — several places, one landscape, and a handful of specific hours that are the actual reason to go. None of these has a date attached, none of them is a package, and if what you want isn't here, say so: most of my best trips began that way.

Bundelkhand Khajuraho · Panna · Orchha A thousand years of sandstone, one river, and two dynasties who thought they were building forever. Sold everywhere as three stops between airports; it is one country, and it wants ten days. Read this one in full → Nagaland Kohima · Kisama · Khonoma · Dzükou Everyone sells the ten days at Kisama. I build it around the other half — six nights of music at a stadium in Kohima, in the state that quietly grew the best rock crowd in India. Read this one in full → Ladakh, all of it Kargil · Suru · Zanskar · Alchi · Leh · Nubra · Changthang · Hanle Everything sold as Ladakh is six days out of Leh. This is both districts, climbed in the right order over eighteen nights — in overland from Srinagar, so that Hanle's Bortle 1 sky falls on night fifteen, when you can stand up at 4,250 metres and enjoy it. Read this one in full → The Thar Jodhpur · Osian · Khichan · Jaisalmer · Barmer · Bikaner The one zone that works by subtraction — people, then light, then sound. Twelve nights, timed to a new moon, around a living fort being dissolved by its own plumbing and the last hundred-odd of a bird the power lines are killing. Read this one in full →

The Vindhyas Bandhavgarh As good a chance of a tiger as anywhere in India — and an old fort on the plateau above the park that almost nobody looks up at. Four days on its own, or bolted onto Bundelkhand to make fourteen.

Smallest so farTwo

Largest so farNumber — one family and the friends it collected

Strangers in the groupNever. You bring your own people.

On how many of you there are

Two is a group. So is twenty.

Most of what I plan is for a family, or a family that has picked up friends along the way and can't imagine travelling without them. If yours is large and you like keeping it together, that isn't a problem to be managed — it's the reason to call me.

And if there are two of you, you get exactly the same attention. The number changes the vehicles and the bookings. It does not change how much trouble I take, and I have never once lost interest in a trip because the group was small.

You won't be put with strangers. There is no shared coach, no other party, no name badges.

Plainly

Who this is not for.

I'd rather lose the enquiry now than lose you on day three.

Anyone who wants to see four states in nine days. I'll plan two places properly or none.
Anyone who needs the same standard of room every night. Some nights it's a haveli. Some nights it's canvas and a bucket of hot water, and that night is usually the one you'll talk about afterwards.
Anyone shopping purely on price. I'm not the cheapest and I won't pretend to be — when I'm more expensive, I'll show you the line item that makes it so.
Anyone who wants to be left alone with a driver and a printed sheet. That's a perfectly good way to travel; it just isn't this.
Anyone in a hurry to book. The first conversation is not a sales call and I don't hold dates against a deposit until we both think it's right.

Write tohello@sahibsalaam.com

Or call+91 00000 00000

I answerMyself, usually within a day

Begin a conversation

Tell me about the trip you keep meaning to take.

Not a booking form. There's nothing to book. This is just the start of the talking, and I'm the one who reads it.

I don't sell holidays.I plan one, and thenI come with you.