MANAGING DIRECTOR
Brand: Quest Adventure Sports Academy
Company: QTT Adventure Sports Academy Pvt Ltd.
Company: Quest Expeditions Pvt. Ltd.
KITESURFER, WINDSURFER, SAILOR, CLIMBER, 4X4, TOUR LEADER, PARAGLIDER, SCUBA DIVER, WILDLIFE LOVER, CYCLIST & FOODIE
Contact: info@quest-asia.com
My involvement in developing Quest Expeditions Pvt. Ltd. began in 1995 when I was still in the final years of school. It was a dream to be able to balance my lifestyle doing what I loved most & that's when the crazy idea of living my dream began. When I started out I was working as an outdoor field guide for the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme (DEAS) with mentor Mr. Andre Morris who was in charge of the West Zone. After trekking the Sahyadri hill range exploring all the ancient forts & palaces hidden in wilderness (A good read: Trek the Sahyadri by Harish Kapadia) my yearning to explore the rest of India set in.
Lucky to get a job with The Imaginative Traveller, Ipswich I spent a few years living it up in Goa & leading tours for the company all over India. This helped me develop my cross cultural communication skills & made me confident as a tour organiser. Travelling through India with a bunch of tourist is one of the best learning experiences in my life. Keeping the group in their comfort zone while creating awesome adrenaline filled Authentic Experiences takes planning & spontaneity. During my tenor with Imtrav I also managed discovering some untouched trails & properties. A part of my job entailed me to encourage remote palaces, home-stays & forts to open their doors to accommodate tourists. I used to write all these learnings & ideas in my little black book which is now a bible for creating new experiences. Working with real travellers gave me immense self actualisation & helped me hone my skills to build something as beautiful as Quest. My journey since then has been accumulating as many instructor certifications in various adventure sports which led me to my education in Queenstown, New Zealand. Queenstown Resort College (QRC) did an excellent job in helping me think about management & being an entrepreneur.
Starting out solo, leading trips into the Indian Himalaya with small groups was definitely the most rewarding experience. The regions we chose were offbeat & extremely authentic, this created an inspiring journey for all my guests. Thinking about it now thats where I was able to coin the catch phrase for Quest "Inspiring Journeys & Authentic Experience". This became the essence of what Quest stands for, a key phrase we use today to start creating any experience. As destinations became popular we switched over to exploring other locations. I realised that besides the locations, the mode of transport we choose often created the experience which gave me the idea of kickstarting cycling tours. With two of my close blue blooded Rajput friends we formulated a plan to start cycling holidays in Rajasthan. Based out of Udaipur (Lake city) in Rajasthan we setup a cycle venture catering to small group tours. Their experience in the region is unparalleled & the experiences were memorable for our guests who return to pedal the meandering quiet backroads annually.
All about adventure; that's where we began.
The change in market for inbound tourism to domestic tourism came about during recession. We made an informed decision to focus on quick get-aways from the city (Mumbai) where I was born. Thats when our project in Kolad began, we setup an adventure camp as well as partnered in on White Water Rafting down the Kundalika river. We were the only camp then & today there are 63 campsites in this region. Kolad helped us bring adventure get-aways to city folk & also built up our team to a strong 23 employees. Since then we focused on creating such facilities around Delhi, Pune, Bangalore & Goa.
All about the experience; that's where we are headed.
There is an evolution to every thing & this is inevitable, while we still push the youth to rough it out in tents & trek with fully loaded backpacks. We have started creating "experiences" with comfort, the trips have all the elements of hard adventure but with an easy pace & extremely comfortable boutique experience at the end of days play.
Kitesurfing holidays; travelling the length & breadth of India I often came across locations which were dream worthy. One such spot was Rameshwaram Island. As an IKO, Kitesurfing instructor I knew where I was headed when I decided to setup a Kiteboarding school. We worked hard to create awareness about the sport & the possibilities of creating athletes who could be competition ready in a few years. Redbull kickstarted this dream for us with Quilla Surf, India's first Kiteboarding competition. We took athletes to Rameshwaram for the finals & since then I have not left the island for good. We now own two properties, one facing north for the north east winds & the other south for the south westerlies- woohoo kiteboarding 250 days a year.
TOP GEAR MAGAZINE
September 2015
KITESURFING IN INDIA