Discovering India Beyond The Brochure, with Shilpa Sharma
“I think my interest in travel as a business is linked to my personal love for travel. I like to travel a certain way and I would always look for that one needle in a haystack experience whenever I set out anywhere. I would wonder how hard it would be to find travellers who I could share this approach to travel with…”
says Shilpa Sharma, creative entrepreneur and founder of Breakaway, a bespoke travel firm that curates immersive journeys and experiences that are otherwise not found in guidebooks.
There’s a certain child-like enthusiasm in Sharma as we begin to unfold how travel became such an inherent part of her being. “Travel has been a silent but abiding teacher for all of my life. As a young girl, it was a perpetual feature during holidays. Many countryside views were zipped on by road trips with not just by parents and siblings but also extended family.”
“As I grew, I think my curiosity was always miles ahead of where I was and I always knew there was a world out there that I wanted to explore. Back then, I would be glued to the television watching travel shows on BBC, and I would think ‘wow, people get paid to have a good time’,” she laughs.
Interestingly, in the initial years of her career, she got the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the country as her role at Fabindia required her to explore new geographies to set up stores. Not much seems to have changed even now–only perhaps her drive to show people an India unseen amid the scene has grown stronger.
A Unique Way of Travelling
When Sharma was with Fabindia for 12 years, she was always scouting new locations to open stores. The joy of discovery, of a way of life, of community interactions and many conversations with the locals, opened a whole world she didn’t even know existed.
“I also think during the two years in Fabindia when I was heading buying and merchandise, I would travel all over the country to source products. Engaging with artisanal clusters was an eye opener, leading to an interest in showcasing crafts and textile traditions through an immersive on-ground experience with artisans and makers,” she recalls.
Bitten by the travel bug, and the joy of discovery, she got to a point where she got too big for the shoe she was wearing and decided to quit working for others- that was the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey.
A year later, Breakaway was born.
“Not working for an organisation full-time frees up so much time and headspace. I then realised I could devote so much more time to personal travels without being answerable and accountable to anybody. It was so liberating,” she adds.
One thing was clear in Sharma’s mind Breakaway had to be unique in its approach to travel, offering exceptional, authentic and well-thought-out experiences. At that time, focus on craft and textile tourism was at the top of her agenda because that had been the mainstay of her work for many years and no one around seemed to be offering those.
“Having worked for over a decade in the domain, I knew that space better than anyone else in the travel sector ever could. I just wanted to focus on experiences that people didn’t talk about or didn’t even know existed. I could offer these because of the professional relationships and networks that had eventually developed into personal friendships. I knew I had the confidence to knock on, and open doors that other people in the travel industry couldn’t even think of,” she says.
Crafting Rare, Authentic and Immersive Experiences
Breakaway, in Sharma’s words, is an outcome of her state of mind and love for travel. She attempts to offer trips focused on community interactions and meeting with people, getting under the skin of a place and finding that rare experience that transcends the realm of cookie-cutter travel.
What sets them apart from the rest is their belief that travel doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all experience. Hence, everything they do is customised to the finer details, based on conversations with a traveller.
“From a larger travel sector perspective, it’s a lot of work. That level of customisation is not scalable as the industry sees it. We have a very different approach to assessing individual interests,” Sharma reiterates.
“Over time, going beyond the brochure became our raison d’etre. It infused every new place we unearthed, every new journey we planned, and every person we collaborated with until one day, our signature experience evolved into our guiding ethos”
For instance, Breakaway’s itinerary to Kachch goes beyond the Great Rann , into the wetlands and rock formations, and then of course the very diverse textile and craft heritage of the region
“Kachchh is also about extinct volcanoes, dinosaur fossils, and rock formations. That’s what we mean when we say beyond the brochure experience of Kachchh. Our approach is not just limited to this but also the people you meet, the food you eat, how you experience art and culture, and heritage,” reveals Sharma. “Every new experience, every new place we discover and every collaboration we enter defines who we are and how we approach travel.”
Food is an intrinsic part of travel that also offers learning in its own right. Sharma, who is also the co-founder of Mustard, a restaurant that combines Bengali and French cuisine meeting over mustard as an ingredient, realised in time , over her travels and then association with Mustard, that regional cuisine in India is grossly underrated.
“Across cultures and societies, food has always been a powerful force connecting families, friends, and even strangers. With much of Indian daily life revolving around food and its preparation, cooking, and presentation, India is a delight for food lovers.”
“I think in my experience of regional cuisines as a traveller, even though vegetarian, there has always been a diverse menu to explore and savour,” she adds.
Breakaway prides itself in curating culinary trails not just for individual travelers or their families but also for prestigious institutes like the Culinary Institute of America, and legacy restaurant teams.
“We have curated masterclasses for students, culinary feasts centred on festivals or integrated regional cuisine experiences in each of our itineraries,” she explains, adding that these have been made possible through the precious friendships that she can lean on that help in giving Breakaway the authenticity tag they proudly wear.
Besides these trips, Breakaway curates everything from solo trips for women travelers, sabbaticals, art and design walks, hands-on workshops, milestone celebrations, multi-generational family trips, elder travel, plantation tours, and more.
They are sensitised and completely geared to create safe yet immersive itineraries for solo women travelling across India. From selecting the right hotels to ensuring support staff like guides and drivers who provide a sense of security too, they ensure that solo women travellers never feel like they are on their own when on the road
“Our own personal, and collective experience guides us in creating bespoke itineraries that deliver the utmost safety without compromising on the unique expectations of our solo women travelers, some of whom are choosing to dive into solo travel for the first time. We ensure that it isn’t their last,” says Sharma.
Community Centric Interactions
A lot of the work Sharma does at Breakaway is to go beneath the surface of communities, for people to understand them and know their work. It isn’t limited to craft and textile trails but also extends to trips that are focused on social sector interactions – she has built a property called Give Change a Chance.
Travel that sustains more than your soul.
A chance to discover something truly unique – a chance to meet people who are transforming vocations in deeply impactful and sustainable ways.
Experience what grassroots enterprise is all about. Learn of social ventures and rural collectives from community-oriented groups and individuals as they re-engineer social and economic change. Discover the impact of policy on their lives and livelihoods. Interact with and glean insights from those digging deep for change. See how the environment is an intrinsic part of rural lives and how every thought and action of theirs factors in ecological sustainability.
As the name suggests, this is how you can learn, first-hand, how travel does not have to be rich in information but poor in learning.
While COVID led many travel companies who were focused on volume-driven groups to pivot–with Breakaway, it helped build an awareness for what it has believed since its inception.
“There’s a greater commitment to a larger good for communities because what they need more of is market linkages. Through the trips that we build, we want people to have more appreciation for handmade products and the communities that make them. We have an opportunity to give people a first-hand understanding of the situation on the ground,” she notes.
While Breakaway may have been around for 14 years, there’s a lot that Sharma wants to continue to build. After all, as Gloria Steinham rightly said, “Travel brings people out of their heads and into their hearts–boundaryless, spontaneous and at one with everything.”
“Travel has allowed me to debunk so many myths, about women in travel, in F&B, from a business point of view and so much more. A constant ‘on the road’ state of mind reminds me to stay open to learning,” she concludes.
