Today, we're speaking with Hira Aftab and Sibu Szymanowska, co-founders of The Hybrid Tours.

Through the power of storytelling and travel, their tour company challenges stereotypes and uplifts activists, refugees, and changemakers in places like Pakistan, Jordan, Armenia, and Georgia.

Both women have impressive backgrounds:

Sibu is a human rights advocate, entrepreneur, and global citizen with two decades of working and living across four continents, who has been traveling full-time for the past five years.

Hira is a humanitarian expert who has worked in the British Red Cross, the EU, and the UN. She also co-founded Our World Too, an organization dedicated to re-humanizing the narrative surrounding refugees and displaced communities worldwide.

In this Christmas Eve conversation, I asked Hira and Sibu how they would re-imagine the world if they could start from scratch.

Our talk is equal parts poignant and filled with laughter.

I hope you enjoy it! 🎄

🐪 We are returning to Jordan next June 🐪

Join us June 5-14, 2026 on a 10-day trip to this country we love so much. We'll visit the Dead Sea, Petra, Wadi Rum, Amman, and many off-beaten spots in between. We'll meet a renowned artist who designed the country's newest currency, spend time with the Bedouins in the desert, and more.

Save $200 by booking an early-bird spot by Jan 5, 2026.

Get details here

Listen to the Episode

What you’ll hear:

  • How a Costa Rican-Polish-American & a British-Pakistani raised in Saudi Arabia started a travel company
  • Traveling as a visibly Muslim woman
  • What decolonizing travel really is
  • Creating travel content with a human rights lens
  • Sibu's lessons from 5+ years of full-time travel
  • Traveling overland from the West to North Africa
💡
“If you're going to [a country] and the local community stops benefiting from you being there, stop going. It's literally that simple. Profits should never outweigh people's rights.” – Hira Aftab
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The Hybrid Tours

Travel as a tool for justice, empathy, and breaking stereotypes

Sibu and Hira founded The Hybrid Tours after traveling to Jordan and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they visited refugee camps and spoke to genocide survivors. 

Theirs is an uncommon operation within the massive travel industry (which generates $2.9 trillion in the U.S. alone).

The goal is to disrupt business as usual by running trips that amplify local and displaced communities and decolonize the history we think we know, while showing travelers the best sights countries offer.

Upcoming trips include travel to the Caucasus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Pakistan.

Use code GOINGPLACES to receive $100 off any tour.

See all 2026 destinations here.

Check out our interview on YouTube →

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What you can do right now:
• Follow The Hybrid Tours on Instagram
• Join The Hybrid Tours newsletter
• Watch Sibu's Instagram series on traveling from West to North Africa overland
• Check out Hira's Instagram post on misconceptions about Muslim women
• Listen to the Our World Too podcast
Travel heals, because it's forcing us to be with people that are different from us." – Sibu Szymanowska
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RISE Travel Institute is our Founding Member

RISE is a nonprofit with a mission to create a more just and equitable world through travel education

Interested in your organization becoming a Founding Member? Send us an email.

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Radostina Boseva is our Founding Member

Radostina Boseva is a film wedding photographer with an editorial flair based in San Francisco.