Written by Sahithi Divi as told by Vandana Vijay
Founder, CEO – Offbeat tracks

Vandana Vijay is the founder of a sustainable tourism platform that creates experiential travel aiming at promoting eco tourism through exploring diverse destinations in the world in addition to her special inclination to the mountains. She is not only fostering experiential travel but also understanding the local communities to benefit their economic supply chain through her organisation. She has a unique vision to create an inclusive affect on the traveller as well as the local community upliftment and catalyses the process of culture preservation.
Vandana hails from a progressive defense family with strong role models. As a child she remembers no adversity due to gender in fact narrates how her mother pushed her at public speaking. Although every girl child would have been through a certain amount of societal conditioning about her dressing or being stated as reckless venturing yet she boldly enamoured to be an army officer. She fought through the cross roads by re defining her journey. Vandana then continued to work at Facebook for few years when she happened to travel as a volunteer to Ladhak. Exposure to rural mountain communities , their ways of life, indigenous resources and regional challenges created a large impact on her.
She then decided to create a platform to empower the mountain community. She identified the entrepreneur spirit showcased by women and saw the power behind using women as the main agents of change in her journey. She believes in the blend of equality whereas also enjoys the beauty of an all women core team that brings empathy and skilled feminism into the thinking frameworks. She began making a deeper research and connected with women on all levels to create a dialogue of communication for executing her idea of experiential travel platform .Vandana is working in alignment to Sustainable Development Goal 11, 8 and 7 using 17.
Vandana expresses that women in India have the opportunity to enjoy an innate sense of network to fall back on. She travels to understand , creates to boost communities and believes in inclusive growth. When asked about the hardest thing to let go she said, ‘ Comfort zone is stable’ . She continues that people assume that dressing is an ideology of independent personality whereas this a just a false myth. She defines woman as creator, democracy as unity in diversity and love as passion.
Written by Sahithi Divi ( source : http://www.impactscientist.com )