The Global Meaningful Travel Map

Antara Cruises

Journey through India's rivers with local experts, wildlife, culture and conservation experiences that support communities and stewardship.

* Please note that this organization also operates out of Bhubaneswar, Odisha India.

OUR EXPERIENCES

Antara Cruises offers expedition and river voyages across India aboard locally designed and built vessels featuring local crews and regional gastronomy, taking travellers through remote waterways, wildlife habitats, sacred landscapes and communities.

Through slow, low-impact and low-volume travel, guests engage with expert guides, conservationists, artisans and community knowledge holders through cultural encounters, citizen-science initiatives, conservation experiences and immersive storytelling.

Along the way, travellers discover the rivers that shaped South Asia's civilisations, living traditions and extraordinary biodiversity while supporting local livelihoods and contributing to the revitalisation, appreciation and stewardship of the region's great river corridors.

ABOUT US

Antara Cruises pioneers regenerative river tourism across South Asia, where today's monsoon makes tomorrow's cruises. Using rivers as pathways to understanding, we reconnect travellers with living cultures, biodiversity and heritage while helping revitalise overlooked waterways, landscapes and communities through locally rooted tourism and long-term destination stewardship.

Antara Cruises is an investee of the UnTours Foundation through its Reset Tourism Fund, which provides accessible investment capital to inclusive, sustainable, and community-enhancing tourism businesses.

IMPACT

Antara Cruises pioneered the return of river cruising to India after nearly a century, creating the foundations for regenerative tourism across river communities overlooked by mainstream tourism. As an independent owner-managed indigenous family company, all ownership, financing, management and profits remain within the region and are reinvested into developing India as a world-class regenerative river cruise destination. Our operations support more than 300 local jobs, over 10,000 indirect livelihoods and 100% local supplier networks, while helping reconnect more than 5,000 riverine villages to tourism, trade and transportation corridors. Through initiatives such as Artisans of Bengal, we engage more than 100 artisans, performers and community knowledge holders, helping sustain living traditions and cultural pride. Environmentally, our locally built vessels utilise wastewater treatment systems, low-emission fuels and hybrid technologies, while partnerships with BNHS, citizen-science programmes and female ranger initiatives foster conservation awareness, biodiversity stewardship and deeper understanding of rivers, heritage and place.

DETAILS

To learn more, contact: sales@antaracruises.com

What are your minimum and maximum group sizes?
2 minimum, 56 maximum

Do you require visitors to pre-book?
Yes

Do you have group rates?
Yes

Do you pay commissions to travel advisors?
Yes

What languages do you offer your services in?
English and Hindi onboard. With advance notice: Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish.

When are you open?
Indian Standard Time office hours: Monday–Saturday, 9:00am–5:00pm, excluding national holidays and major regional festivals. Cruise schedules vary by region and itinerary, with departures generally operating between September and June, and some routes remaining available during July and August.

What accommodations do you make for people living with disabilities?
Antara Cruises welcomes travellers of varying abilities and works with guests and travel advisors in advance to discuss individual needs wherever possible. However, many of the destinations visited are located in remote river landscapes, heritage sites, villages and protected natural areas where accessibility infrastructure remains limited. Guests should be independently mobile and able to walk approximately 3 kilometres over uneven terrain, steps, jetties and unpaved surfaces. Detailed accessibility information is available prior to booking so travellers can make informed decisions about suitability.