From a heritage mansion in Chettinad to the sea ice of Antarctica, our team plans every part of your family’s journey: the house, the flights, the guides, the table and every transfer between them.
Most families who travel well keep a travel agent, a hotel they trust, a friend who knows Kyoto, and an assistant holding it all together. We replace the juggling with one relationship.
We keep our client list small on purpose, so the team that plans your journey is the team that answers when you call from the road. Over time we learn what nobody should have to repeat: who eats what, who wakes early, which rooms suit your parents, and how much of a day the children want planned.
One team that knows your family, your food and your pace
One written plan with the reasons behind it, not a brochure of options
On WhatsApp for the whole journey, not only office hours
Nothing booked that we would not book for our own families
02 · What we arrange
Everything between leaving home and coming back.
i
Private journeys
A summer holiday, a milestone birthday, the children’s first time on the ice. Planned from a blank page around the people travelling, never from a package.
ii
Whole places
A heritage house, a safari camp, a yacht, a small hotel, taken over completely for an anniversary, a reunion or a wedding weekend. No other guests in the building.
iii
Doors that are usually shut
An archive opened for a morning. A monastery dance that is not performed for visitors. A chef’s counter kept for your table. Arranged properly, and never promised until it is confirmed.
iv
The kitchen, answered
Strict vegetarian, Jain, no onion or garlic, at sea, in a desert camp or at altitude. Written into every supplier’s brief before we confirm a single night.
v
Three generations, one journey
A slower morning for grandparents, an early start for the teenagers, rooms on the ground floor where they are needed. Where altitude or distance calls for it, a doctor travels with you.
vi
The paperwork
Visas, permits, travel insurance, school-holiday dates and the forms nobody wants to fill in. Handled, and checked twice.
03 · How we work
Four steps, and then you arrive.
01
A conversation
Before we plan anything, we talk about how your family likes to travel, so we can be sure the pace and the place are right for you.
02
One written plan
A considered plan with the reasoning beside each choice. We revise it with you until it is right, then we hold everything.
03
Everything arranged
Your house. Your transport. Your meals. Your guides. Your private openings. Every ticket, transfer and tip, handled.
04
With you throughout
Someone from our team on call for the whole journey, and there in person where it matters. The only thing left is to arrive.
04 · Places
Journeys worth the planning.
A few of the journeys we plan for families. Some take a year of preparation and a little luck with the weather. All of them are better when someone else has thought of everything, and we will always tell you plainly when a place is not right for your family, or not ready yet.
Swipe to see all twelve1 / 12
AntarcticaNov
The emperors at Snow Hill
An ice-strengthened ship pushes deep into the Weddell Sea, and a helicopter sets you down on the sea ice to walk out towards an emperor penguin colony. The window is a few short weeks, and some years the ice simply refuses. Few journeys ask for more patience, or repay it so completely.
GreenlandJun–Aug
Icebergs at midnight, Ilulissat
The Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is fed by one of the fastest-moving glaciers on earth. In summer the sun barely sets, and after dinner a small boat slips out among icebergs the size of city blocks, in a light that never quite fades.
NamibiaMay–Oct
The desert, by private aircraft
A small plane carries you from the red dunes of Sossusvlei, where centuries-old camelthorn trees stand in the white pan of Deadvlei, to the fog-bound Skeleton Coast, where elephants and lions have learned to live in the desert. The whole country feels like one long, uninterrupted view.
Galápagos, EcuadorAll year
A yacht for the family, and nobody else
A small yacht chartered for your family, with its own licensed naturalist, moving between islands by night so you wake somewhere new. Sea lions sleep on the landing steps, giant tortoises graze in the highlands, and the children snorkel beside turtles that have never learned to be afraid.
MongoliaEarly Oct
With the eagle hunters of the Altai
In Bayan-Ölgii, Kazakh families have hunted with golden eagles for generations. Each autumn they ride in for the Golden Eagle Festival. Stay on afterwards with a family in the mountains, sleep in a ger, and ride out at dawn with a hunter and his bird.
Patagonia, ChileOct–Apr
Torres del Paine, on foot
Granite towers rise straight out of the steppe near the bottom of the world. Walk to the glacial lake at their base, watch condors hang on the wind, and come back each evening to a lodge where the only sound is the weather.
UgandaJun–Aug, Dec–Feb
An hour with the mountain gorillas
In the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, trackers lead a small group up steep, muddy slopes to a habituated gorilla family. The time allowed with them is one hour, and it is the hour people talk about for the rest of their lives. Trekkers must be fifteen or older.
BhutanOct–Dec, Mar–May
The kingdom at its own pace
The path to Paro Taktsang, the Tiger’s Nest, climbs through pine forest to a monastery built into a cliff high above the valley. Beyond it lie fortress monasteries, archery matches in village fields, and, in winter, black-necked cranes returning to the Phobjikha valley.
JapanApr, Nov
Kyoto, behind the curtain
Tea with a master of the ceremony in an old wooden townhouse. A temple garden at an hour when it is quiet. A night in a ryokan, where dinner arrives as a long procession of small, seasonal courses. In November the maples turn and the city is at its most beautiful.
EgyptOct–Mar
The Nile, by dahabiya
Sail between Luxor and Aswan on a traditional dahabiya with a handful of cabins and an Egyptologist who stays with you all week. Begin at the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, where Tutankhamun’s treasures are shown together for the first time. The best journey on this page for grandparents and teenagers alike.
Arctic NorwayNov–Mar
Under the northern lights
Above the Arctic Circle around Tromsø, winter nights are long and dark enough for the aurora to put on a proper show. Days are for dog sledding, whales in the fjords and a sauna beside the sea. Nights are for waiting outside under reindeer skins for the sky to move.
Chettinad, IndiaNov–Feb
A mansion for the whole family
In the villages of Chettinad, merchant families built palaces of Burmese teak, Italian marble and hand-made Athangudi tiles. We take one over completely for your celebration: meals from a Chettinad kitchen, the courtyards to yourselves, and nobody else in the building.
Somewhere else in mind? That is usually where the best journeys begin.
Our team has spent more than fifteen years planning other people’s travel.
Along the way we noticed that the families who travel best rarely just book a trip. They have someone who knows them: who remembers that one parent needs the ground floor and another eats no onion or garlic, and who quietly makes everything work.
IDAM is that office.
Idam is the Tamil word for place. We began in Madras, and we plan for families wherever in the world they would like to be.
The IDAM team
யாதும் ஊரே யாவரும் கேளிர்
These lines come from a Tamil poem written about two thousand years ago, and they are the closest thing we have to a founding principle. Every place is home. Everyone is kin.
Purananuru 192, Kaniyan Poongundranar
06 · Contact
Begin a conversation.
Tell us a little about the journey your family has in mind. Someone from our team reads every note and replies personally.
