Recently launched travel company Kind Human offers immersive experiences and expeditions to remote destinations, with the goal of unveiling and protecting the shared roots of Mankind.
“Let’s get one thing straight: we won’t save the planet unless we save humanity first. We live in a present in which we feel completely lost when deprived of technology, and indeed we are. We can no longer unplug even when we travel…and at the same time we are getting increasingly disconnected from ourselves and from the people around us.”
It is with this premise that Andres Adasme Tapia begins to tell about Kind Human, the travel company he recently founded.
A professional guide and leading expert in archaeoastronomy (i.e. the science that studies the links between astronomy and ancient architecture), Andres has been working in adventure tourism for more than 15 years, the last 10 of which he spent as “Explorer and Chief Experience Designer” at Mountain Lodges of Peru.
“To look to the future, it is essential to go back to the past, to the roots of mankind,” Andres continues. “Kind Human aims to do just that: to preserve our common roots, to protect the unwritten knowledge of our ancestors, to rediscover our intrinsic connection with Mother Earth and all the beings that inhabit her. And to do all this through deep immersions in the ancient world.”
The experiences offered by Kind Human take place in remote locations and are co-created with small rural communities. It is in these communities, in fact, that Man and Nature still share the same rhythms, and that we can still have access to an extraordinary collective heritage of traditions, techniques, and unwritten knowledge. As Juan Jose Mendoza Arredondo (hotelier, entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Kind Human) strongly emphasises, ‘Here it is not a question of going to charity for people who are poorer or less fortunate than us. If anything, it is the opposite. The members of the communities we work with are real masters for us: we want to learn as much as we can from them, and put ourselves at their service’.
The pilot project started in collaboration with the community of Choquecancha, a tiny isolated village sitting on an archaeological site on the edge of the Peruvian Andes, not far from the Amazon Rainforest. Here, the ancient language of the Andean peoples, Quechua, is still spoken, and the entire social network is still entirely governed by Ayni, a Quechua word which indicates reciprocity, mutual support in all daily activities, according to the idea that ‘today we work for you, tomorrow for me’.
With the concept of ‘rooting’ central to each experience, the Kind Human team expresses the importance of going as deep as possible, into the roots precisely, of the local culture, rather than just moving around it (“touring”, i.e. what a normal tourist does). This means getting into the daily life, into the old traditions, ancestral practices and cosmovision of the hosting people. Each day in Choquecancha is therefore dedicated to a specific aspect of community life and Andean culture, with activities together with farmers and shepherds, weavers, in the fields and in the kitchens, as well as traditional ceremonies and evenings around the fire dedicated to astronomy or local legends.
The ultimate goal of Kind Human’s immersive experiences is twofold: on the one hand, for the guests, to assimilate as much as possible the concept of Ayni and regain an intimate connection with Nature; on the other hand, for the host community, to protect and enhance their ancestral knowledge. To this end, the community members are not only active participants and shareholders of the project, but are also offered free courses in ecotourism and support in a number of local initiatives.
Kind Human also organizes scientific expeditions and research trips in collaboration with world-class explorers and experts, always in search of the roots of humanity. The team is currently developing expeditions in Guatemala, Brazil and Egypt.
Official partners of Kind Human are Mountain Lodges of Peru, a leading adventure tourism operator in Peru, WideOyster, a media company dedicated to high-end storytelling strategies for tourism organizations and publisher of WideOyster Magazine, and Autentic, a Belgian company that manufactures top-quality tents and glamping gear.
Learn more about Kind Human from this video recently filmed in Choquecancha:
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