About Us
Who We Are?
We listen to you and try our best to design the trip that is most suitable to your expectations, taking into account all your wish-list criteria while accommodating the time and budget you have.
Thambi Mathew
Founder & DirectorThambi Mathew : Director
Thambi Mathew, a passionate traveller and an endearing personality who conceives his job as his life sees himself as “an observer and a true lover of his country’s culture.
He breathed life to his entrepreneurial desires and convictions from his vast 28 years long experience in the travel and tourism industry in the form of building his brainchild 'INDIA WITH MATHEW'. Staring his career initially as a very skilled driver to a multilingual guide, particularly French-speaking, the saga is truly inspiring.
Since he was once a skilled driver, who navigated the steep roads of India to take his clients to the must-see sites, he soon realized how essential it is to be able to communicate with clients in their language in order to assist them better in this diverse land.
His studies and continuous practice had prepared him to express himself in Hindi (The national language of India) and English, in addition to his mother tongue Malayalam.
He decided to take courses at the prestigious Alliance Française de Pondicherry, becoming the first driver in South India to assist his clients in French. With his diploma in hand, and his honest desire to continue his growth, he now hopes to immerse himself more deeply in the tourism industry. He is also fluent in Tamil, a very useful language in South India.
Mathew's years of experience in guiding travellers and understanding their needs gave him the confidence to become a national guide. Driven by his attraction to the dizzying cultural diversity of his country, its history, and his irresistible urge to travel, he once again took up his studies, this time as a National Guide at the highly reputed IITTM Institute in Gwalior, and then for a Master's degree in Tourism Administration (MTA). He also holds a Bachelor's degree in Indian History at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala.
He graduated with the National Guide Diploma, which is the highest level of certification that an Indian guide can achieve. He then started guiding in South India, working with French and international travellers to their great satisfaction, and over time, he gained the trust of the largest travel agents in Europe.
As a bonus, his job as a guide provided him with ample time and freedom to follow his travel desires, especially in Europe, France, Morocco, the United States, and Japan to open up to the cultures of the world. During his travels, he developed a real passion for other cultures and learned the different ways of life. Needless to say, this helped him enormously later on to understand the needs and desires of the clients he accompanied to India.
Over time and after many years as a guide, he observed the evolution of tourism and the changes that occurred in the industry, its race to time, lack of originality, and losing charm and authenticity of the programmes of some major operators. He wanted a remedy for this and decided to build his own travel agency to offer travellers a true vision of his country and bring a little bit of India into the hearts of the French, which was his ultimate motivation.
Disarming by his simplicity and his benevolence, during his trips, Mathew (and his team from now on) opens the doors of India's culture to you, creating a bridge between the western world and India and revealing the backstage of the Indian local life, which is very special and important during the trip in the sub-continent.
Mathew built the foundation for his career along the path of his curiosity and entrepreneurial freedom, offering his expertise through the creation of tailor-made and thematic itineraries with his travel agency MATHEW VOYAGES.
The emblem of MATHEW VOYAGES portrays Hanuman, the sacred Monkey God of Hindu mythology, represented with a club (gadā).
He is the god of wisdom, devotion, manual dexterity, and physical agility.
According to tradition, "a characteristic of Hanumān is his complete and permanent loyalty to Rama, his spiritual Master. The sacred Monkey God is perfect; no one equals him, neither in learning, nor in understanding the meaning of scriptures, nor in moving about at leisure." He is the "servant of the divine".
In the same way, Mathew will take you through India, at your service, with dedication, and share his deep knowledge and invaluable experience with you.
