The story behind

mindfulness yatra

founders story

The question

Mindfulness Yatra began on a ridge between worlds. One direction is Nepal, home to Mount Everest and the birthplace of Gautama Buddha. The other is the modern tension many of us carry, eco guilt, and the fear that travel might harm what we love. One question has followed me like a heartbeat.

Can we travel in a way that

heals us and does not harm

the world? is a Paragraph Font

The story behind

mindfulness yatra

founders story

The question

Mindfulness Yatra began on a ridge between worlds. One direction is Nepal, home to Mount Everest and the birthplace of Gautama Buddha. The other is the modern tension many of us carry, eco guilt, and the fear that travel might harm what we love. One question has followed me like a heartbeat.

Can we travel in a way that heals us and does not harm the world? is a Paragraph Font

25+ years in tourism • Nepal-born expertise • VVIP travel experience

• Mindfulness-led approaches

The first spark

At sixteen, I was a student in Kathmandu who loved sacred places. For a class assignment, I wrote a poem about sustainability at Pashupatinath, the UNESCO World Heritage temple. Around the temple, I saw trees being chopped in Mrigasthali jungle and plastic creeping into spaces and rivers that once felt untouched. Something precious was at risk, and my body knew it.

How do we honour the places we visit?

The first spark

At sixteen, I was a student in Kathmandu who loved sacred places. For a class assignment, I wrote a poem about sustainability at Pashupatinath, the UNESCO World Heritage temple. Around the temple, I saw trees being chopped in Mrigasthali jungle and plastic creeping into spaces and rivers that once felt untouched. Something precious was at risk, and my body knew it.

How do we honour the places we visit?

The Career and the ache

For years, I designed and operated journeys for travellers across Nepal and the wider region. I watched people soften through travel, a first glimpse of the mountains, tea in a local home, silence in front of an ancient stupa or a temple.

Yet I also saw the cost. Plastic bottles on remote trails. Fast development. Communities reshaping themselves to meet visitors’ expectations. The whisper became a call.

“There has to be a better way to travel!”

The inner turning point

In 2010, I was in a relationship that looked perfect from the outside and broke me inside. For five years, I cried at night and showed up “fine” in the morning. Eventually my body forced a choice, freeze, or act.

I chose action and flew to a remote ashram in South India. What looked like an escape, forty days of a 200 hour yoga teacher training became the start of my spiritual journey. With simple living, yoga, breathwork, chanting, study, and silence, meditation and no phone or internet, the mind first grew louder, then softened.

I learned that healing happens through presence practiced again and again.

The inner turning point

In 2010, I was in a relationship that looked perfect from the outside and broke me inside. For five years, I cried at night and showed up “fine” in the morning. Eventually my body forced a choice, freeze, or act.

I chose action and flew to a remote ashram in South India. What looked like an escape, forty days of a 200 hour yoga teacher training became the start of my spiritual journey. With simple living, yoga, breathwork, chanting, study, and silence, meditation and no phone or internet, the mind first grew louder, then softened.

I learned that healing happens through presence practiced again and again.

the outer ordeal and the fire

I moved to Australia for a postgraduate degree in International Sustainable Tourism Management at Monash University in Melbourne, investing over sixty thousand Australian dollars. Then, on the trail to Wineglass Bay in Tasmania, I slipped and shattered my right ankle. Three surgeries and a long recovery followed, but I studied through pain and graduated with high distinction.

Later I worked in Sydney, then moved to Canada and joined a tour company’s green team to bring sustainability awareness into the business.

Then, COVID stopped travel and I was laid off!

the outer ordeal and the fire

I moved to Australia for a postgraduate degree in International Sustainable Tourism Management at Monash University in Melbourne, investing over sixty thousand Australian dollars. Then, on the trail to Wineglass Bay in Tasmania, I slipped and shattered my right ankle. Three surgeries and a long recovery followed, but I studied through pain and graduated with high distinction.

Later I worked in Sydney, then moved to Canada and joined a tour company’s green team to bring sustainability awareness into the business.

Then, COVID stopped travel and I was laid off!

That however did not stop me!

I leaned deeper into Climate Friendly Travel and Regenerative Tourism education.

Around the same time, Dr. Rick Hanson’s course The Compassionate Brain gave me a life changing truth. Self compassion is essential, not selfish. That opened the door to deeper training in Mindfulness Meditation teaching and trauma sensitive approaches.

In December 2022, my mother, seventy five, was diagnosed with aggressive stomach cancer. The prognosis was twelve weeks!

Within three days I packed up my life in Canada, flew to Nepal, and let go of my full time travel job. Six intense months in Delhi followed. I could not practice perfectly, but I practiced honestly, conscious breaths in waiting rooms, loving kindness silently offered to families pacing corridors, gratitude while holding her hands. Against the odds, my mother healed and she is still with us.

Returning to Kathmandu after a decade away, I felt the changes, more traffic, more concrete, more plastic, more pollution, fewer trees. I noticed how easily sustainability could become a marketing word instead of a lived commitment. The eco anxiety I had studied was suddenly in my body, walking with me through familiar streets that no longer looked and felt the same.

I felt a grief I could not explain!

I found myself searching for pockets of fresh air, for trails where birds still called, for rivers where the water still moved somewhat freely. As I did, a question arose with renewed urgency.

How do we offer the true beauty of Nepal and the Himalayan region, its sacred places, deep spiritual heritage, gentle people, hidden valleys, in a way that honours the land and supports communities instead of exploiting them?

In response to this in 2023, training as a Mindful Outdoor Guide, I was asked to open all five senses, and everything connected. Light filtering through leaves, wind and birdsong weaving around you, earth steady beneath your feet, rain on soil and pine in the air, and clean breath filling your lungs, until you feel that quiet felt sense of belonging.

The decision and the invitation

One mountain still stood in my way, perfectionism. “Not yet. Not ready.” What changed was steady practice, self compassion, listening deeply, trusting myself, surrendering, working on anxiety and fear and building courage, one small brave choice at a time. Also, teaching trauma sensitive mindfulness meditation to the staff of a women’s shelter in Kathmandu, showed me again and again how people can soften and return to themselves.

So, I made a decision to honour caregivers, eco anxious travellers, climate grief, trauma, burnout and the complex realities of being human and made my lifelong passion into focus.

To share Nepal and the Himalayan region not just as a destination, but as a living classroom for presence, compassion, and mindful travel.

The decision and the invitation

One mountain still stood in my way, perfectionism. “Not yet. Not ready.” What changed was steady practice, self compassion, listening deeply, trusting myself, surrendering, working on anxiety and fear and building courage, one small brave choice at a time. Also, teaching trauma sensitive mindfulness meditation to the staff of a women’s shelter in Kathmandu, showed me again and again how people can soften and return to themselves.

So, I made a decision to honour caregivers, eco anxious travellers, climate grief, trauma, burnout and the complex realities of being human and made my lifelong passion into focus.

To share Nepal and the Himalayan region not just as a destination, but as a living classroom for presence, compassion, and mindful travel.

This is how Mindfulness Yatra was born

In Nepali and Sanskrit, yatra is a sacred journey, a walk with intention and purpose.

Mindfulness Yatra is an invitation to awaken inwardly while travelling more gently outwardly.

I have a trip planned for Nepal in September 2026, a 14 night journey that blends culture, nature, mindful practice, reflection, and simple sustainable choices that protect what is sacred. Because when we travel unconsciously, living ecosystems, cultural dignity, and community wellbeing are at stake.

If you recognise yourself in the wanting and the worry, know this. You are not alone. You do not have to be perfect to begin.

And if you are wondering who will be holding this space with you, here is what has shaped my work, both professionally and personally

what i bring into the journey

travel industry depth & cultural care

* Over 25 years in the tourism industry, crafting and operating itineraries for travellers from around the world. I have designed journeys across Nepal, Bhutan, India, Sikkim and Darjeeling, Tibet, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

* My work has supported everyday adventurers as well as high ranking officials, aristocrats, and members of foreign royalty. I have designed and operated thousands of groups arriving in Nepal by private aircraft, including coordinating tours for as many as 220 VVIP guests arriving on a private charter flight. This depth of experience has taught me how to create journeys that are safe, seamless, meaningful, and deeply respectful of local communities and culture.

* I have had the privilege of operating journeys for travel companies around the globe, from Dertouristik and Thomas Cook to Captain’s Choice, APT Touring, Zen Oriental Journeys, Mundus Reisen, Travelpack, MTA and Bhutan and Beyond Australia among hundreds of others—each itinerary sharpening my ability to deliver travel that feels effortless for guests and respectful to the places that welcome them.

education in sustainable tourism

* Two year postgraduate degree in International Sustainable Tourism Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

* Two year Climate Friendly Travel Diploma with SUNx Malta and academic partner, Institute of Tourism Studies Malta

*Ten week course on Regenerative Tourism from Australia

*Mindful Outdoor Guide training from the US

* Education manager coordinating and offering online climate related tourism education for students from around the world, especially from climate vulnerable countries, including Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States

trauma sensitive mindfulness meditation

* Two year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program

* Ten week Mindful Self Compassion training

* Additional trainings in Healing Trauma, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, The Power of Presence, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, and more

*A deep commitment to helping people create mindset and behavioural shifts through mindfulness, both in daily life and during travel

yoga, reiki, sound healing and embodied practices

* 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training, Ashram in South India

* Online Chair Yoga training through the Ashram in India

* Buddhist and Compassions studies in the monastery in Kathmandu

* Reiki practitioner for years, and now a Reiki Teacher, trained under a Japanese Reiki teacher from Japan where Reiki originated. My lineage is 'Komyo Reiki Do'. In 2011, when a dying newborn street kitten recovered and lived another seven years after I offered Reiki, the experience humbled me deeply and forever strengthened and deepened my devotion to this gentle path of healing and service.

* Sound Bowl practitioner and I continue learning from a Nepali teacher.