A Father’s Unfinished Dream Is Now Giving Hundreds of Seniors the Courage to Travel

“I couldn’t fulfil my father’s dream for him. But I could build something that would help hundreds of others fulfil theirs,” says Saakshi.

For Saakshi Maheshwari (38), that thought became the beginning of something she had never planned to build. A travel writer and content creator for more than a decade, she had spent years helping others find places. But after losing her father in 2023, travel began to mean something different. It became a way of giving senior citizens the freedom to experience the journeys they had spent years postponing.

Today, she runs ‘The Original Travel Company’ with her husband, Rajat Arora, taking small groups of seniors across India and overseas. Since launching the senior travel initiative in June 2023, she says she has travelled with approximately 350 senior citizens across more than 40 domestic and international journeys.

But the story began with a man who believed retirement should not mean giving up on life.

The man behind the idea

Her father, Dr S K Maheshwari, was an army doctor who served for five years, including a posting in Tawang.

He later worked with organisations including WHO and UNICEF on India’s polio eradication programme and with the Uttar Pradesh government on leprosy eradication and grassroots healthcare. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people were afraid to step outside, he travelled to villages around Agra to help people who had contracted the virus.

“He was a doctor by profession, but service was at the core of everything he did. He believed that medicine was a way of serving people, and that compassion was as important as treatment,” she tells The Better India.

He also had a particular concern for senior citizens. He wanted to spend more time visiting old age homes and using his medical experience to help elderly people. But work and family responsibilities kept pushing that dream into the future.

He was also an enthusiastic traveller. He loved long drives, wanted to explore Kerala, and hoped to return to Tawang. He often spoke about travelling through the Northeast.

Then, in January 2023, he was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer.

Two months later, at just 64, he died.

One last holiday

Just months before the diagnosis, Saakshi had travelled with her father to Kerala in October 2022. She remembers him dancing beside the sea, laughing whenever the waves touched his feet. “I didn’t know then that it would be one of our last trips together,” she says.

His death made her question something many families take for granted.

Time.

“Like many families, we had assumed there would always be ‘later’,” she says. “Later to travel, later to slow down, later to fulfil dreams. His diagnosis, and then his death, taught me that later is never guaranteed.”

She had already spent much of her adult life around travel.

Born and raised in Meerut, she completed her BTech in Greater Noida between 2004 and 2008. She then worked with Accenture from 2008 to 2011 before pursuing an MBA in Mumbai from 2011 to 2013. She returned to the corporate world, working with companies and startups until late 2015.

But travel had always been an itch she could not ignore.

Around 2015, she began travel writing and content creation while still working. She later left the corporate world and spent more than 10 years travelling, writing for publications including AirAsia’s in-flight magazine and working with tourism boards such as Assam Tourism, Madhya Pradesh Tourism and Malaysia Tourism.

“Travel taught me empathy, openness, and perspective. It was never just about seeing the world, but about understanding people, cultures and, ultimately, understanding myself,” she says.

After her father died, she knew where she wanted to take that experience. In June 2023, she launched her senior travel initiative. In January 2026, she gave the venture a name of its own, The Original Travel Company.

What was missing

Before starting, she noticed that senior citizens were occasionally the focus of mainstream travel planning. The itineraries were mostly designed around speed. Wake up early, board the bus, visit several attractions, climb stairs, move to the next destination, and return late.

That might work for younger travellers. For many seniors, it can turn a holiday into an exhausting exercise.

“Most of them had not stopped dreaming about travel,” she says. “What had changed was their confidence, and the support available to them.”

Companionship was another major barrier. Some had lost their spouses, while their children lived in other cities or countries, and friends who once travelled with them had stopped doing so, leaving many hesitant to join large groups of strangers.

The founder felt the problem was not where seniors travelled, but how they were expected to travel. “What they needed was a slower, more thoughtful experience, one that put their comfort, confidence and wellbeing before ticking places off a list,” she says.

That philosophy now decides every trip.

It starts with a recce

The couple does not take senior travellers to a destination until they have personally studied and experienced the route themselves. First, they research the destination. Then they travel there themselves, checking routes, hotels, attractions, and transport.

They ask themselves one question. 

“If I were travelling with my own parents, what would I want them to experience?”

They check hotels for accessibility, comfort, and location, and even ask hotel staff to show them the rooms and facilities over video calls when needed. In Japan, for instance, repeated visits taught them that hotel size matters because rooms can be considerably smaller than those in other countries.

They also consider the number of stairs at sightseeing spots, the distance between attractions, the availability of lifts and the location of healthcare facilities. A first aid kit accompanies the group everywhere, even during short stops.

“Health planning can never be an afterthought,” she says.

The pace is deliberately slower, with breaks built in. Meals include a combination of Indian and local cuisine, while dietary requirements are considered individually. Every itinerary goes through multiple revisions. “The objective is not to maximise sightseeing. It is to maximise relaxation and enjoyment,” she says.

Nothing is left to chance

The attention to detail continues once the group begins travelling.

The team tracks visa requirements, flight schedules, weather conditions and health advisories, particularly for international destinations.

Before a recent Sri Lanka trip, they learnt about a dengue outbreak around Colombo. Travellers were informed and asked to carry full-sleeved clothing, while the co-founders carried anti-mosquito sprays.

Even hotel check-ins are planned in advance. “We like to call the hotel two hours before we are about to reach there with the group to make sure that the rooms are ready, the ACs are turned on, the welcome drinks are ready,” she says. The goal is that seniors should never have to arrive after a long journey and wait at reception.

Their groups are also capped at 12 to 14 people. Saakshi and Rajat personally accompany every group, meaning they know the travellers, their needs and their concerns. “We want to return as a family,” she says.

The holiday is only part of it

For many travellers, the friendships become just as important as the destination. They celebrate birthdays, remember anniversaries, and frequently see travellers who arrive alone leave with new friends and a WhatsApp group they are reluctant to close.

Leena Menon, a retired children’s librarian who spent more than 20 years working with Auckland Libraries in New Zealand, travelled to Bhutan with the company. She was looking for something different from a conventional package tour. “The focus was not just on covering destinations but on creating memorable experiences,” she says.

During the trip, the team surprised Leena and her husband with an anniversary celebration. “It made us feel that we were travelling with friends rather than a tour company,” she says.

For 76-year-old Ahmedabad resident Mrs Pervin Phiroze Guard, the biggest concern was safety. After losing her partner, she was living alone and worried about travelling without a companion. Her daughter found the company on Instagram in April or May 2024.

She was initially sceptical. The team answered her questions and even shared contact details of previous travellers so she could speak to them. Her first trip was a mother-daughter holiday to Goa in June 2024.

“What touched me the most was Saakshi’s genuine care; she constantly checked on everyone’s comfort and made sure every senior traveller felt included, valued and cared for,” Pervin says. The experience changed her outlook. “The trip reminded me that age is just a number,” she says.

Then there is 68-year-old Ranjana Dixit from Satna, who retired from Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board in 2020. Work, family responsibilities and health problems, including a knee replacement, had kept her from travelling as much as she wanted. 

She first heard about the initiative through her daughter in May 2024. Since then, she has travelled to Kashmir, Bhutan and Rajasthan with the company and celebrated her birthday on trips in 2024 and 2025.

“Fulfilling my dreams has raised my confidence and made me want to travel even more,” she says. Even after undergoing another knee replacement in April 2026, she already has two trips lined up for October and November.

She wants other seniors to remember one thing, “If your trip is led by Saakshi or Rajat, then you can keep your worries at home and enjoy the trip to the fullest.”

350 stories and counting

So far, the founder says approximately 350 senior citizens have travelled with her across more than 40 domestic and international trips. Their destinations have included Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Bali, Bhutan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as Kashmir, Ladakh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, the Andamans, Sikkim, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and the Rann of Kutch.

Around 40 percent of travellers return for another journey.

But the number that matters most is not 350. It is the person boarding an international flight alone for the first time at 68. It is the widow taking her first holiday after losing her husband. It is someone seeing the ocean for the first time at 70. And it is the children who call afterwards to say they have seen their parents happier than they have been in years.

“We are a source to give them the confidence to step out, experience new places, and bring more joy and happiness into their lives,” the founder says.

A legacy in motion

The company remains intentionally small, with four core members. The couple works alongside a social media executive and an operations executive, supported by trusted local partners. Rajat left his corporate career of more than 15 years to join the venture full-time.

There is no strict division of responsibilities between the couple.

“From social media to marketing, from operations, from booking flight tickets to doing every little thing that needs to be done for a business, both of us are all hands on deck,” Saakshi says.

For her, the company has become more than work. “I have to say that I wouldn’t have survived these three years if not for the senior travel company that I have built,” she says. “That kept me going.”

The work has changed how she thinks about ageing too. “I have met people in their seventies who are more adventurous, more inquisitive, and more open to new experiences than people half their age,” she says.

Her biggest lesson has been not to postpone life.

“I have always believed in putting relationships before business, because when you invest in genuine relationships, the business naturally follows,” she says.

The Original Travel Company’s next plans include destinations across Central Asia, Europe and Africa. But she wants growth without losing the personal care that brought the company this far.

Her goal is not to become the biggest senior travel company. She wants to become the most trusted. She hopes families will stop seeing travel as a luxury for their ageing parents and begin seeing it as an investment in their happiness and wellbeing.

And if her father could see what his daughter has built, she believes he would not care about the number of destinations or travellers.

“He’d simply look at the seniors laughing together, and say, ‘This is exactly what I hoped for,’” she says. Her father spent his life helping people live healthier lives. Saakshi hopes she is helping them live happier ones.

All pictures courtesy Saakshi Maheshwari.

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com