Sara Eloise

I started travelling at eight, when I found Dominique Lapierre's The City of Joy in my parents' library. Northern Italy felt dull and reading about elsewhere was the only escape available at that age. As soon as I was old enough I left for Barcelona, then London. I studied social science and human rights because I wanted to change the world, which is a thing you are allowed to believe at twenty. Then London got hold of me. I ended up in tech, spending everything I saved on travelling. Those early studies probably explain why I am usually more interested in the people who live in a place than in how the place looks in pictures.

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Indonesia came late. I had been travelling in Asia since my twenties, from India to Taiwan, with the obligatory stops in Thailand along the way, and only reached Indonesia in 2024. I spent nine months that year moving through the country. In 2025 I came back to live in Lombok, partly by choice and partly by luck. Here I founded h·ati h·ati, a travel agency run by a local team, working with guides, hosts and small operators we know personally. We are paid by travellers rather than by the businesses we recommend, so the people we work with keep more of what they earn.

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I do not think there is one right way to travel, or that every trip needs to be planned in the same way. The part I enjoy most is getting to know who is travelling, because the same island can be a completely different trip for two different people.

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