Diovanna Dunmall | November 2008 issue
Scottish-born Amar Latif is a young blind man with a passion for travel. “I wanted to see the world,” he explains—but he didn’t want to do it alone. So in April of 2004, he founded Traveleyes, the first company to pair the sighted with the visually impaired for small-group tours to places as farflung as Iceland, Zambia, Canada, Turkey and Italy.
Traveleyes groups have walked with lions in Zimbabwe, swum with dolphins in Cuba and jet-skied in Malta. Each blind person is paired with a sighted traveler, and pairs change daily. Blind travelers are said not to need help getting around, but they do appreciate all the things sighted people add to the experience—the “beautiful pictures” they paint, as Latif says.
London-based Kirsty Major is blind and has taken four trips with Traveleyes. Traveling with the sighted has given her “a sense of freedom and empowerment,” allowing her to be independent while meeting others who, “through their descriptions, made the trip meaningful and gave insights I would otherwise have missed,” she says. Trips focus on sensory experiences and offer activities involving sound and touch. Sighted travelers enjoy a discount on the price of the trip and the opportunity to travel the world. Caroline Anderson, a special-needs teacher in Peterborough, England, has been on many trips with Traveleyes, initially to help. Now she goes because “everyone is there to make sure everyone else has a good time. There is such a good atmosphere, so much laughter and friendship” a truly sensational experience.
