Welcome to thewhistlingoak.com wholly owned by Ekonkar Marketplace LLP, your number one source for all things travel, outdoors and wild.
Our Story
20 years of sunrise silhouettes guiding us deeper through America’s beloved parks & wild spaces in insatiable pursuit of high mountain magic!
Chapter 1: Safari Dreams in Southern India
We first caught the open-road bug shortly after college when work sent me on assignment to remote Bandipur National Park. Spying a tiger lounging at golden hour during a safari ride sparked newfound awe – I immediately called Ritu insisting we MUST ditch city hustles to prioritize more adventures when possible!
For the next few years between Mumbai projects, we scheduled extended holiday stints self-driving through North India’s vibrant sanctuary jungles and ethereal Himalayan hamlets to reset our souls.
Scrambling up mountain ridges revealed stunning Kanchenjunga vistas birthed a longing for the day we could build entire years around simply roaming where our hearts led.
Chapter 2: Courting Adventure Together
By 2012, the corporate cage felt stifling with adventure memories flooding our dreams near nightly now. So I proposed a radical vision…what if we trade careers climbing company ladders for prioritizing passions like photographing elusive snow leopards along Ladakh’s frozen highland trails?
While India’s lush jungles still called back seasonally, we felt magnetically drawn towards America’s legendary national parks next to explore extensively for a decade…at least.
After settling dual remote freelancing gigs, we mapped a wide languid loop route crisscrossing the western United States to lose ourselves inside Nature’s masterpiece!
Chapter 3: Spellbound By Nature’s Canvas
That first year touring national parks blew open our perceptions of beauty’s outer limits. Yellowstone left us awestruck witnessing psychedelic geothermal oddities and mega fauna like grizzlies, wolves, and roaming herds scent-marking territory.
Yosemite’s towering giant sequoias and thundering waterfalls induced divine connections with forces crafting this ecological fairytale eons before humans arrived. Carefree weeks camping along the Virgin River through Zion revealed a dwarfed feeling in nature’s amphitheater of billion-year-old canyonscapes carved by tireless flow.
The endless diversity of lifeforms humbled us – scrambling mile-high ridges revealed Nature’s vision stretched far beyond mankind’s grandest feats of architecture or engineering. Out here fully immersed inside Nature’s creation masterpiece, we slid into community with fellow outdoor fanatics who felt more like kin than strangers after mere days sharing sunsets.
Chapter 4: Protecting Untrammeled Wilderness
The more profoundly swept up by raw wilderness and humbling creature encounters, the deeper our commitment grew towards conservation activism.
We invested years educating park visitors on preserving wildlife habitat during peak seasons when crowds overwhelmed fragile ecosystems. I volunteered running sustenance shuttles enabling backcountry trail crews to focus efforts on maintaining infrastructure far from crowded corridors.
During winters between adventures, we nurtured giant sequoia seedlings destined for reforestation in regions devastated by wildfires with the Sierra Club. Through every initiative, our motivation remained consistent…help fund the future so generations inherit the sacred wilderness sanctuary we fell eternally in love with.
Chapter 5: Bliss Chasing Roamers
20 years since that fateful Bandipur tiger sighting flipped our trajectory towards prioritizing adventure and wonder over corporate rat races, we scarcely recognize our former cube-trapped selves anymore!
Out here stargazing along Meteor Crater as the Milky Way bursts into view or pausing atop Angel’s Landing awed by Zion’s immensity, we’re settled into life as location independent explorers chronicling wilderness magic often overlooked beyond marquee parks.
Having honed this off-grid camper van living routine pursuing nature’s siren song year round, we can’t picture trading endless horizons for cubicles ever again! We aim to fund conservation through guided trek packages, photography workshops, and writings sharing little-captured wild sanctuaries so fellow adventurers access and protect them for generations too.
Care to ride shotgun chasing alpenglow through the next breathtaking sunrise? Plenty more national park magic awaits! Our newsletter below keeps you updated about where we go!
Our Core Values
The whistling oak is supposed to be words of wisdom spoken by the wise old oak tree. We began this blog to:
- HONESTLY answer common questions on destinations
- RECOMMEND products, hotels and services we use ourselves
- CREATE a COMMUNITY that supports each other to explore this beautiful world
Thanks for landing on this website – we hope you leave enriched and wiser 🙂
Do get in touch for anything – anything at all!
oh, and before you go. We have met many people during our travels. Some inspiring a spiritual awakening in us. Nature and it’s custodians have a profound effect on you! We capture some of these learnings in our new blog, Envisioning Miracles. Do check it out and spread the love!
Regards,
Aditya and Ritu,
