Amar Latif

Amar Latif likes a challenge. A successful entrepreneur, hegave up his hard-won role as Head of Commercial Finance at BT to start his own travel company. He’s travelled the world, skydived, ski-ed, climbed, even donea spot of acting, and is also a TV presenter. A remarkable enough set of achievements, made more impressive because Amar has been blind since he was18-years-old. Born with an incurable eye condition, Amar had lost 95% of his sight by the time he was in his late teens. Determined not to be defined by his blindness, he continued through university and into a corporate career (despite the belief from some that you couldn’t be both blind and an accountant). Amaralso had an incurable lust for travel, but found travel companies seriously lacking when it came to accommodating the needs of independent blind and partially sighted explorers. So he started his own travel business with a mission to help blind people explore the world in a way that was usually closedto them. Traveleyes brings together blind and sighted travellers, usually unknown to each other before the trip, and unites them through experiences fromsailing to safaris to trekking up Europe’s highest peaks. Sighted travellersguide and share their descriptions with their blind companions. In response,the sighted experience first-hand a fearlessness and curiosity about the worldthat they’ve often lost. As well as becoming an award-winning entrepreneur,Amar’s love of travel has been the foundation of a broadcasting career. For theBBC2 series Beyond Boundaries, Amar was part of a group of disabled travellersthat explored Central America, trekking from the Atlantic to the Pacificcoasts, through jungle, over a volcano, and across one of the continent’slargest lakes. He’s appeared on the award-winning River Walks for BBC1, and wasthe first ever blind contestant on Celebrity Masterchef. On BBC1’s Pilgrimage,he trekked a part of the Sultan’s Trail from central Europe to Turkey exploringboth history, geography and faith. In BBC2’s Travelling Blind he joinedcomedian Sara Pascoe as they travelled from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar to theBlack Sea and the Cappadocia rock formations in an affecting and personaljourney in which Amar explained the necessity of experience and the importancebut impermanence of memory for blind people

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