Encounters Asia

Encounters Asia focuses on exclusive, luxurious journeys into the myriad colours of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. We also give your travelers an opportunity to feel and experience Asia from close quarters. From the mysterious tiger to the elusive snow leopard, we make encounters with our untamed nature unforgettable. We bring our culture and cities to life by letting guests behind the scenes at festivals, diving deep into our incredible, diverse cuisine and delving into our country’s fascinating history.

Our personalized service means that we will match every adventure to your client’s wishes and personality. From luxurious palaces to boutique hotels, our product expertise allows us to not only match the right property and experience to your traveler, but also to offer incredible value for money. No travel dream is too outlandish for us to make it come true.

Encounters Asia offers myriad adventures in Asia including…

• Wildlife safaris – we offer the best, most exclusive wildlife experiences in our national parks. From tigers to one-horned rhino, our expert guides will provide exciting and memorable safaris in our wilderness areas.
• India’s festivals – a true behind-the-scenes immersion into India’s cultural and relgious festivals.
• Snow leopard spotting – a high altitude adventure that includes a taste of culture, local delicacies, spotting myriad wildlife and of course, the search for the  elusive ‘grey ghost’ – the snow leopard.
• Culture, history, wildlife and the world’s best tea in Sri Lanka.
• Soft trekking and cultural encounters in Nepal.
• Helicopter and private plane charters.
• Bespoke, ‘you dream it, we create it’ adventures.

Amit Sankhala has continued the legacy of the Sankhala family by carrying forward the mission of nature conservation and wildlife tourism. As the Managing Director of Encounters Asia., Tiger Resorts Pvt. Ltd and Jamtara Wilderness Camp, Amit has vast knowledge and boundless enthusiasm in the field of tourism which enables him to succeed in his profession. He has had the privilege of experiencing first-hand Rudyard Kipling’s version of the Jungle Book, growing up seeing the national parks of India as they should be and knowing the importance of the country’s flora and fauna. He has also been involved with various innovative projects, such as Tiger Nation, which has created one of biggest databases of Tigers in India. It is a citizen science project whose purpose is to bring attention to the actual number of tigers existing in the wild. He also sits on the board of Wild Landscapes based in the US, whose primary idea is to conserve larger habitats and work on human-animal conflict.

Amit is also a trustee of Tiger Trust, developed in 1989 by his grandfather. The Trust has been educating children on wildlife, setting up medical camps in rural villages surrounding the national parks, working on legal cases against wildlife crime and involved in capacity building programs. To futher understand conservation and how to move forward in his camps and for the wildlife tourism, Amit has traveled and studied other wildlife conservancies, parks, concessions and sanctuaries around the world, from places like Okavango Delta in Botswana to the rain forests of the Panatanal with its jaguars; from the polar bears in the Arctic to the pumas of Chile; mountain gorillas of Uganda to the astonishing underwater life of the Galapagos. His expeditions to see snow leopards have gained popularity amongst the wildlife community and have helped set the standard for others to run these expeditions.

Observing the politics and models of wildlife around the world, he has brought the best of these ideas back to India. One of the models, which he has put to use in his own Jamtara Wilderness Camp, was a community sharing model through one-of-a-kind ‘Star Beds’. Amit has lectured across the world on sustainable and eco-focused tourism.

Discovery Channel and Academy Award-Winning Director Ross Kauffman have recently finished a film on the Sankhala Family called TIGERLAND. It premiered at Sundance and is available on Discovery Go or Amazon Prime. The film is also playing at various film festivals across the world in an effort to raise money for PROJECT CAT (Conserving Acres for Tigers).