With the benefit of hindsight, Sam McManus acknowledges that starting his own tour operation was “maybe unwise”, given he had no experience of working in travel. In spite of that gap in his CV, the same week he left an unfulfilling city job, he decided to found an adventure tour operator.
He describes the experience of working for an oil and gas consultancy, as a “slow, but unrelenting degradation of his soul” and he knew he needed to make a fundamental change.
In 2016, he bought eight tents and started running “niche” trekking trips in Ethiopia. Kyrgyzstan followed, then Iran.
