Nicola Shepherd
The founder of safari/travel firm Explorations Company tells Christian Koch about three decades of organising impact-led trips around the world, building her business from scratch and how she makes her best decisions in Africa…
At 7pm on a star-filled night in Chad’s Zakouma national park, Nicola Shepherd stepped out of her tent to join the rest of her group for dinner. Greeting her on the verandah were two lions, sitting nonchalantly. The only thing separating Shepherd from the fearsome predators was, she says, just “a thin piece of cotton”.
“I knew these animals could eat me alive in three-seconds flat, but only if I did something silly,” she remembers. “In fact, I’d rather come face-to-face with lions in the bush than walk down certain parts of London… The thrill was much greater than the fear.”
The sentiment has arguably driven many of the bold business decisions Shepherd has made in her career. Focusing on “thrill rather than fear” saw her found Explorations Company in her early-20s despite never having run a business before. The derring-do attitude is behind many of the once-in-a-lifetime trips Explorations Company has organised, whether it’s birthday parties at an Indian maharaja’s palace, recreating Sir Vivian Fuchs’ 1958 expedition to the South Pole or whisking HNWI tourists to off-the-beaten-track destinations such as Congo and Sudan.
Yet, Shepherd’s fear – of what could happen to the world’s environment and its species – has also driven an important facet of her business: its commitment to philanthropy and conservation (most Explorations Company trips aim to pair clients with conservation and humanitarian projects). With her business acquired by Swiss investor Viadi in January 2022, she hopes this ethical ethos will continue.
“Ever since I started Explorations Company, the prime driving factor was the desire to give back,” she says. “We want the firm to become as sustainable as possible so that everybody can travel with their conscience as well as their hearts.”
Born in Kolkata, India – where her father was head of a pharma corporation – Shepherd’s early years gave every indication she’d lead an adventurous life with nature at its core: weekends were spent on tiger safaris in the Sundarbans; snake-charmers performed at her birthday parties.
Moving with her family to Kenya, then South Africa, saw her exploring local savannahs and veldts. “All the best decisions I’ve ever made in life have been made in Africa,” she says. “Westerners often arrive in Africa, put their feet on the soil, and have this sense of everything being ‘okay’. Given mankind’s roots began on the continent [experts believe human life first emerged in Africa 3.8m years ago], it’s understandable there’s a connection to the soil from whence we came.”
After studying a viticulture diploma, Shepherd moved to Botswana where she carried out conservation work with wild dogs and ran camps in the Okavango Delta.
Next, Namibia. Here she ran another camp and was involved in local AIDS awareness campaigns, travelling to local villages to help educate women about birth control.
She believes the nuances and frustrations of daily life in Africa provided the perfect prep for her next manoeuvre: moving to the UK to set up Explorations Company in 1989.
“Each area in Africa has its own cultural sensitivities. Being aware of that – in order not to offend – really taught me about dealing with people,” she says. “Then there’s the day-to-day challenges of working in Africa: what to do when one runs out of food, or vehicles break down. You learn that in the western world, we have a very cushy number.”
Having secured her first clients – a British family she’d met in Botswana – she discovered an important lesson about doing business in the UK. “I soon found out in the UK it’s not <what> you know, but who you know,” she says.
She dealt with it by mustering the chutzpah she’d used working in Africa. “I contacted the <Financial Times> and said, ‘Why don’t we put on groundbreaking holidays for your readers?’” she remembers. “When you’re younger you have courage on your side, this additional steel where you don’t care… We got the contracts but then had to create trips that’d never been done before. We had to think outside-the-box.”
Over the last 35 years this lateral mindset has seen Explorations Company arrange adventures for everybody from European royalty to FTSE 100 leaders, whether it’s canoeing the Zambezi, trekking the Himalayas with Sherpas or gorilla safaris in Rwanda. One of Shepherd’s favourite trips was taking tourists to Tanzania, with Save the Elephants pioneer Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who’d lived there 30 years previously. Approaching a herd of pachyderms, he recognised a matriarch elephant he’d worked with called Eleanor.
“He called out her name and Eleanor came to him, putting her trunk on him,” remembers Shepherd. “Iain couldn’t believe it. In all these years, Eleanor had seen her family wiped out by man and yet she still trusted this individual and recognised him. It’s a reminder of the very strong bond between humans and animals.”
Like most other travel companies, Explorations Company was hit hard by Covid. “Travel shut down for two years, but despite us having no business, we still had bills to pay,” says Shepherd. “We just became very proactive with our marketing. Everybody else stopped doing their PR, but our newsletters were stronger than ever.”
Shepherd has noticed travel has changed since the pandemic. “People are valuing time spent with family – we’re definitely seeing more multi-generational trips,” she says. “Also, more people – especially the younger generation – are thinking about sustainability, microfinancing and carbon footprint.”
“For this younger generation, travel is much more immersive – they want to know their hard-earned money will elevate people’s lives. I’d like to think the days of travelling somewhere, ticking a box and saying, ‘Yup, done it!’ are over.”
It dovetails with one of the over-arching aims of Explorations Company: its philanthropy. The travel firm supports over 60 projects across the world, ranging from an Ethiopian orphanage to anti-poaching projects in Zimbabwe. Shepherd aims to tackle these with the same fearlessness she’s combated other challenges in her career.
“So many people have wonderful ideas, but fear prevents them taking these ideas to their final conclusion,” says Shepherd. “Never consider anything to be daunting. If you believe in an idea sufficiently enough, you’ll be able to make it happen…”