Don’t just travel,
go on a sidequest.
Join unforgettable small-group trips led by your favorite creators — explore hidden gems, dive into local culture, and uncover the parts of the world mass tourism overlooks.
find your next sidequest!
Your Next Adventure Starts Here.
What is a sidequest?
Stuck in the grind? Craving adventure? Life on fast-forward?
That’s your sign you’ve been stuck on your main quest too long.
Picture this: Instead of stepping out of bed to drag yourself for another day at the office, you’re stepping out to hike to a hidden alpine lake in Greece — laughing along the way with a group of strangers who feel like lifelong friends.
That’s the magic of a SideQuest. It’s not a detour. It’s the part of life you will remember, the best part.
Why Travel with sidequest?
A SideQuest is your invitation to shake things up, chase something wild, and find meaning along the way.
And by joining one of our SideQuests, we’re sure you’ll find meaning as we design each trip around these core values:
✅ Hidden Gems — Go where guidebooks don’t.
✅ Creator-Led — Meet your favorite creators
✅ Adventure First — Hike, raft, canyon, and explore.
✅ Deep Connection — Start as strangers, leave as friends.
✅ Cultural Immersion — Real food, real people, real places.
✅ Zero-Stress Planning — We handle every detail.
The story behind sidequest
Hi! I’m Alex the Founder of SideQuest Travel — an Aussie obsessed with storytelling, travel, and chasing the kind of experiences you can’t plan. In 2023, after burning out in the corporate grind and the end of a five-year relationship, I quit my engineering job for good, packed a bag, and booked a one-way ticket out of Australia.
It all kicked off with a Holi group trip in India (shoutout @noratheexplorahh), and I was hooked. The culture, the chaos, the connections — it hit me hard. I realized the magic of travel wasn’t just in the landmarks, but in the SideQuests, the strangers-turned-friends, and the moments you stumble into off the beaten path. I'm drawn to hidden gems, avoid the crowds, and never pass up a SideQuest — as I've found, that SideQuests are where the best memories are made.
Since then, I’ve freelanced as a trip leader across Kenya, India, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan, and Europe. That full-circle moment — leading trips after starting on one as a wide-eyed traveler — still blows my mind. Travel has been transformative for me, and now through SideQuest Travel, I’m here to pass that on to other curious, open-minded souls ready to explore, grow, and to pick up some epic stories and memories.
Travel with your favorite creators
We partner with creators you already follow, so you can share incredible real-life experiences with them — not just comments and DMs.
We prefer to stay in a family-run guesthouse, eat at local tables, and work directly with guides and small businesses that share their culture, not just their services. That means your trip puts money directly into the hands of people who deserve to benefit from tourism — and often don’t.
By doing this, we aim to help divert the flow of mass tourism, to ease the pressure on fragile sites, and provide meaningful support to communities that genuinely want and benefit from visitors. It’s a conscious way to explore — better for you, better for them.
Because the best adventures don’t just change you — they help change the world for the better, too.
Our Impact
SideQuest Travel isn’t just about seeing the world — it’s about seeing who benefits when you do.
Too often, the money from tourism flows straight to big-name hotels and overcrowded cities, while remote communities — the ones with the stories, soul, and traditional culture— get left behind. SideQuest was created to change that.
Every SideQuest is built to make an impact. We take travelers off the tourist trail and into regions that don’t usually see visitors — not because they’re lacking, but because they’ve been overlooked.