People

Dr V.S Ramachandran

V.S. Ramachandran is designs our tour itineraries and co-hosts some of them. He has a profound love for India, her ancient traditions and temples. He curates our tours, as well as appears on some of them.

Ramachandran is a distinguished professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor of biology at the Salk Institute. He is best known for his experiments in behavioural neurology which, despite their apparent simplicity, have had a profound impact on the way we think about the brain. He has been called “The Marco Polo of neuroscience” by Richard Dawkins and “The modern Paul Broca” by Eric Kandel.

Ramachandran is on the editorial boards of several international journals and has published over 180 papers in scientific journals and is the author of many best selling books, including “The Phantoms in the Brain.” He has been elected a member of the Atheneum, the world’s oldest scientific club. In 2003 he gave the annual BBC Reith lectures and was the first physician/psychologist to give the lectures since they were begun by Bertrand Russel in 1949. In 2005 he was awarded the Henry Dale Medal and elected to an honorary life membership by the Royal Institution of Great Britain, where he also gave a Friday evening discourse (joining the ranks of Michael Faraday, Thomas Huxley, Humphry Davy, and others). In 2010 he delivered the annual Jawaharlal Nehru memorial lecture in New Delhi, India.

Most recently, the president of India conferred on him the second highest civilian award and honorific title in India, the Padma Bhushan. And Time magazine named him on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Click here for Wikipedia article on Ramachandran.

Jaitirth Rao

Jerry curates our itineraries and also co-hosts some of our holidays. Jerry has an encyclopaedic knowledge on all things Indian and Sri Lankan –  history, temple art and architecture, traditions and culture. A keen traveller, Jerry now spends most of his time exploring India and Sri Lanka, uncovering forgotten temples and traditions. He is extremely passionate about India and Sri Lanka’s rich heritage and has partnered with us to showcase the regions.

Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao holds a Master’s degrees in Business Administration from the IIM-Ahmedabad as well as the University of Chicago, US. He is a visiting faculty at both institutions. He has been honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Chicago.

He was also the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Mphasis during which time he was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award twice in 2001 & 2004, and the Karnataka State Rajyothsava Award in 2005. In the past, Mr Rao has served as chairman of NASSCOM. He was with Citicorp for 20 years in various capacities, including the Head of Citibank where he was primarily responsible for building one of the bank’s Asian retail and credit card franchises, apart from working in various parts of the world.

He has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Harvard Business School and lecturer at IIT, Bombay.

Click here for a Wikipedia article on Jerry Rao.

Chandan Seetharam

Chandan is the managing director at Indian Expeditions and has over 25 years of industry experience, including managing one of India’s top wildlife resorts. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Business Administration from the University of Madras.

Chandan was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in India. Being from a family of academicians, he picked up a deep love of Indian and Sri Lankan history. He has spent years travelling throughout India and Sri Lanka, with a focus on exploring the regions ancient history and cultural heritage.

Chandan has personally led many, many trips and has hosted some of the world’s most acclaimed historians as well as casual travellers. Extremely easygoing and a great story teller, he is regarded as one of the best trip leads in the Indian Sub-continent.

Chandan still finds time to lead some our trips, as that’s what he loves doing most.

Deepa Jayaraman

Deepa is an Indian classical dance artist and certified Yoga instructor. She has been part of some illustrious student lineages, belonging to the oral tradition for more than 20 years. She is a Fellow Scholar in Performing Arts and Indology, and is a ‘culture host’ for Indian Expedition tours.

Deepa has in-depth knowledge of Indian and Sri Lankan art forms. She brings alive ancient sculptures and temple art forms with engaging conversations.

She says – ‘I love travelling. As much as I love the Musée du Louvre and Sistine Chapel, the columnar niches of the South Indian temples resonate differently inside of me. The staggering geographies, the intricate craft, the intellectual art forms of master crafts are so engaging, revealing Space, transporting me each time to a different world. Travel with me! Allow me to kindle the ‘unseen’ dimensions within you.’

VN SEETHARAM

Seetharam is one of South India’s most sought after guides for travelers from the U.S.A., U.K., Australia and other countries.

From trips to the temple town of Kumbakonam to the scintillating beaches of Sri Lanka, Seetharam is acknowledged as an expert in Indian and Sri Lankan architecture, sculpture, Indology and culture.

It is his bookseller roots that have made Seetharam a cultural historian of our times, much appreciated for his insights on prose, poetry, literature and scriptures alike. For decades together and all of the 90’s Seetharam dominated the book business in India with his exclusive and rich treasure, popularly known as “The Bookshop” in Chennai.

The press adored his niche motley of books and tagged it as one of the best collections in India at that time. His elite collection on Indology covering the entire range of Indian history, architecture, iconography, philosophy, Vedic thought and contemporary social ethos was considered to be exemplary. Today Seetharam has hundreds of fans who once visited his bookshop, admired his passion and are coming back to make these trips around South India and Sri Lanka with him.