Wander watch

That malayalis have a thing for travel is well established. One of India’s smallest states, Kerala, has three international airports, a fourth under construction, and a fifth being mooted. Now, Santosh George, the 42-year-old owner and managing director of Kottayam-based Labour India, a group with interests in education and publishing, is betting big on travel. He is investing “between Rs 25 crore and Rs 35 crore” in a new Malayalam TV channel called Safari, which, he claims, is the first regional language channel in India centred around travel. The channel has been in the works for the best part of two decades. George has been to around 75 countries with his camera since 1997, conceptualising, capturing, editing, and giving voice to more than 560 episodes of a popular travel show called Sancharam (travel), earlier telecast on Asianet. (Safari airs other travel programmes as well.) “I do almost everything for Sancharam myself, and that’s what I am trying to teach my team,” says George, who is hands on, shooting and directing all the episodes by himself. Oh, and he is one of 600 people around the world who have paid a quarter of a million dollars to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to sign up as a space tourist.