Prachi Jain vividly remembers the conversation that altered her life. Six years after founding her travel company, Leave Your Mark, a colleague proposed that their travelers go crab catching on the Indian coast. Jain was immediately opposed to the crab catching suggestion. “When somebody that was on our team said that,” she reflects, “it just immediately seemed wrong. Why would we want to disturb sea creatures, and upset them, and scare them only for tourism?” 

That moment ultimately propelled Jain to the vegan travel movement. For a year and a half, she stopped working with those team members and hosting travelers. “That’s when I really went deep into my value system and what I believe in,” she explains. “It then sort of emerged that I wanted to fully shift into vegan travel.”

Vegan travel, at its core, is about requesting hotel rooms free from animal materials, selecting activities that don’t involve exploiting animals, and refraining from eating animal products. But Jain has a more expansive vision and states that it is about the intersectionality of animal rights, human rights, environmentalism, and cultural preservation. She holds that “when we work in silos, rather than seeing all of these things in a symbiotic relationship, I feel like we’re not really gonna achieve success in any of them.”

Escape To was Jain’s first venture into this market. That company is now evolving into the Ahimsa Travel Club through a merge with Kim Giovacco’s Veg Jaunts and Journeys. Jain plans for this new company to focus more deliberately on elements of the symbiotic relationship. 

In particular, she wants Ahimsa travelers to be mindful of their food choices while abroad. Jain advocates that locals “dictate what veganism looks like in their country rather than forcing European or Western standards of what vegan food looks like.” She points to India where smoothie bowls and avocado toasts are currently popular. As opposed to local produce, avocados are expensive, must be imported into the country, and are not environmentally friendly. Restaurants selling these products are not accessible to those indigenous to India; locals are priced out. However, there is an alternative. Jain remarks that “the Indigenous people of most of the countries that we visit are plant-based and know what plant-based food is and are easily able to whip up plant-based dishes that are so much more delicious and so much more interesting than smoothie bowls and avocado toast.”

Jain often thinks of a street vendor in Mexico City who was able to produce an indigenous, plant-based meal at the ready. The vendor, who sells tlacoyo, told Jain and her travelers that she loves vegan food and does not need to cook with meat. The tlacoyo stand is not vegan; however, the vendor cleared away the animal products for the group. Jain remembers that the vendor “just made probably one of the most delicious meals that we had throughout the trip.” 

In addition to emphasizing openness to local food, Jain also wants to combat overtourism. The travel industry is currently experiencing an issue with 90% of travelers visiting 10% of the world’s destinations. The Ahimsa Travel Club will offer trips to bucket list locations such as Tokyo and Kyoto and Florence and Sicily because her company loves “supporting veganism and the vegan industry around the world,” and some popular cities like Mexico City, Tokyo, and Kyoto are excelling with vegan startups and entrepreneurs. However, she also wants to offer trips to locations such as Bangalore and Coorg in India and Etla in Mexico that are “off-the-beat.”

When asked how she envisions the Ahimsa Travel Club developing in the future, Jain points overwhelmingly back to the intersectional nature of the vegan travel movement. She would love to see the company amass a force of advocates for “sustainable aviation fuel,” “for animals, for the environment, or Indigenous communities.” Around the year work for those connected to the company, including drivers and tour guides, is also an aspiration. “We work with incredible people, and to be able to provide them a steady income would be incredible,” she remarks.

Jain’s intersectional commitments are captured in the evolution of her company’s name. Leave Your Mark was “cute;” Escape To “didn’t embody what we do because we’re not really trying to do escapes,” but the Ahimsa Travel Club matches the company’s mission. “It’s been a journey,” states Jain. “I think for the first time in 15 years, I really love the name of my brand. Finally.”

This post’s featured image is of Prachi Jain during a group tour in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Prachi Jain, born in New Delhi, founded her first travel company, Leave Your Mark, in 2010. Leave Your Mark connected travelers with multiweek volunteer opportunities in India. Since its founding, Jain’s company has undergone two transformations: first into Escape To, her first vegan travel company, and then into the Ahimsa Travel Club, a merger with Kim Giovacco’s Veg Jaunts and Journeys. Now based in Los Angeles, Jain hopes to foster a vibrant vegan community united by a love of travel.