It started with two people who kept travelling for very different reasons, and kept running into the same wall.
Basava has covered seventeen states and four union territories, and never once travelled as a tourist. He travelled as a local instead — picking up the accent wherever he landed, eating off whatever roadside cart everyone else was eating from, talking to whoever was in front of him: an auto driver, a priest, a child, a daily-wage worker on a break. What he took from it wasn't a list of places. It was how small his own life looked against how large the world actually was, and why he wants every traveller leaving India to see it the same way — its food, its languages, its rituals, each one whole on its own terms.
Losh is younger, and wants the same thing everywhere she travels in India: to be welcomed as a local, not handled as a tourist. What bothers her most is how travel gets treated at home — one more expense on a list, instead of a journey that changes a person going in and coming back out. Building Unpacko is her attempt to change that: the kind of trip that rearranges you, not just your calendar.
Travel in India split into two options, and neither one worked: inexpensive and generic, or expensive and still generic. Five-star hotels with the same breakfast buffet. Cultural tours that put you behind a barrier to watch a festival happen to other people. Nobody was building for the traveller who wanted proximity — an actual seat in the courtyard, not a program with the word "authentic" printed on the brochure.
Unpacko isn't a mass-market tour agency, and we will never sell generic "festival packages" or discount holiday bundles. We operate as a private editorial curator for travellers who want real depth.
Our mission is simple: to open doors to India's most guarded cultural moments, living traditions, and sacred spaces — on real cultural calendars, in tiny group sizes, with absolute respect.
When you travel with us, you don't watch a culture perform for you. You are invited to witness it as a guest.
If you are looking for a noisy group tour, a rushed itinerary, or a transactional holiday, Unpacko is not for you.
But if you are an NRI yearning to reconnect with the real heartbeat of home, an international traveller seeking true cultural depth, or a curious domestic traveller wanting to step past the tourist lens — welcome home.
We are excited to share these sacred thresholds with you. Come witness India with us.
— Losh & Basava
Co-founders, Unpacko
Seventeen states and counting. Leads the on-ground side of Unpacko — the itineraries, the host relationships, the budgets, the version of the trip that has to hold up on the actual day, not just on paper.
Wants to be treated as a local everywhere she travels, not handled as a tourist. Leads Unpacko's brand, and the relationships with the host families and communities who make each trip possible.
Unpacko Utsav, our festivals product: two festivals, two regions, groups of six to eight. Get the first product right before it's anything bigger.
Immersive homestay experiences embedded with local families and communities, built on the same principle as the festival trips: real access, not a curated version of it.
Adventure expeditions and uniquely themed homestays, each with its own accent and art direction, carried by the same masterbrand and the same standard of access.
Every vertical we add earns its own place. None of them earn a separate case for trust — if you've been let in once, you've been let in for good.
We're not selling a bigger show. We're changing how travel in India gets lived — starting with the festivals, not stopping there.
See our first trips