What is Wayward Paper?
Wayward Paper is part of Leatherback Travel, the team behind 489 successful trips and over 4,400 happy travellers since 2019. This is where sketching journeys happen in small groups, led by an artist who's spent a career teaching people to see. We spend meaningful time at places most tours rush straight past.
The idea started on a trip run by Patch Adventures, one of our sister brands. One afternoon in Khiva, Uzbekistan, a local artist joined the group to paint the citadel walls. Out of two packed weeks of craft and culture, that was the afternoon nobody stopped talking about.
Our travellers know their way around a pencil already, and they're not interested in ticking off sights from a bus window. They'd rather sit in one spot for an hour or more, watch the light change, and leave with a page that means something.
When you travel with Wayward Paper, trips end with finished sketchbooks, where each page tells a story and brings vivid memories to life.
Meet Our Team
Mat, Founder
Mat runs Leatherback Travel, the group behind Patch Adventures, Camino Women, Wayward Paper and many other in-house brands.
Travel shaped most of his life. His parents took him across most continents when he was young, and in his solo-traveller days he once booked a same-day flight on a whim, driving himself to the airport for a last-minute flight to Bali because he felt like it. That habit took him to South America, where he lived for years, met his wife Rebeca, and picked up fluent Spanish along the way.
These days he splits his time between Leatherback's brands, meeting ground partners in person. He still believes travel can shift how someone sees a place. Wayward Paper is the plainest version of that belief: slow enough to notice where you are, structured enough that noticing doesn't feel like work.
Meet Our Guides & Artists
Abdu Samadov, Ground Guide
Abdu has spent over twenty-four years guiding journeys across Central Asia, working with companies including National Geographic, Leatherback, Road Scholar and the Smithsonian. He's led travellers through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and grew up in Samarkand, among bazaars that change colour through the day and courtyards you could sit in all afternoon without reaching the end of what's in front of you.
He's also lived and worked in England and the US, and speaks Uzbek, Tajik, Farsi, Russian and English.
For Abdu, a sketching trip matches how he already believes travel should work: slow, unhurried, paying attention. He handles the arranging and the small problems in the background, so the only job left for the group is to look and draw.
Naomi Reece, Watercolor Artist
Meet Naomi Reece. She's spent the last decade teaching sketching in the field, led courses on the Urban Sketching Symposium circuit, and published a collection of travel sketches from six years living in Lisbon. Her rule is simple: sit down, don't rush, and don't get up until the light has changed.