In April 2023, Arjun and Priya came back from a nine-day “curated cultural journey” across Rajasthan. They’d paid ₹84,000 each. They’d seen four cities, three forts, two gimmicky cooking classes, and zero people they’d remember a year later. On the flight back they did what bitter people often do — complained for two hours.
By the landing, the complaint had turned into a list. By the following week, the list had turned into a spreadsheet. By the following month, we had 31 places across four Indian states that we’d actually lived in, or had friends living in, and a simple idea:
Subham Paul is the founder behind Offbeat Peak. A traveler before he was a founder, his obsession with the unmarked, the unphotographed, and the unmarketed places shaped the entire idea of the company.
Across six countries — India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Dubai — he has spent the last decade chasing the kinds of places guidebooks tend to skip. Quiet villages, family-run kitchens, monasteries no tour bus has heard of, beaches without names. The Offbeat Peak philosophy is, in many ways, his own — built from those long, slow, sometimes deeply unproductive trips.
“I wanted to build a travel company for the kind of traveler I am,” he says. “Someone who’d rather spend three days in one valley than three days across three countries.” Now he leads strategy, scouts new destinations, and writes the journal pieces that don’t quite fit anywhere else.
We won’t add a destination we haven’t been to. We won’t recommend a homestay we haven’t slept at. We won’t stuff itineraries with “must-sees” just to make them look full. We won’t take commissions from hotel chains that corrupt our recommendations. We won’t run the 50-person bus tours that pollute the very villages we love.
We will, however, take responsibility when something goes wrong. We’ll rebook your stays if roads close. We’ll call a doctor if you need one. We’ll sit with you on WhatsApp at 11pm when your flight delayed. These aren’t policies. They’re what normal people do for each other.
Slow, steady, and a little stubborn. We don’t want to be the biggest travel brand in India. We want to be the one your trusted friend recommends. The one you come back to three times over five years. The one whose team you’ve met and whose opinions you respect.
By 2028, we want to have launched 12 destinations properly (Andaman and Nagaland are next). We want every single one to be something we’d send our mothers to. That’s the bar.
