Meet your hosts

Two friends who met at university in Istanbul, took very different roads for ten years, and found each other again in the desert. Now they are walking the next one with you.

Shahad in a sideways stretch on a desert trail, beside a tall green cactus under a cloudy sky

Shahad

Co-founder. Yoga, movement and play.

Shahad is a wild force of nature who loves to find the most natural flow of things and people, and to set their true essence free.

Her relationship with nature has been shaped by years of travelling the world, looking for wild landscapes, meaningful cultures and the kind of experiences that reconnect us to what matters. Along the way, yoga, movement and time outdoors became her ways of getting present and feeling at home in herself.

With a professional background in the solar and renewable energy industry, sustainability is not just something she talks about. It is woven into how she sees the world. She loves natural, regenerative ways of living, and journeys that honour the places and communities that host them.

Today Shahad creates soulful nature journeys for people who want a deeper way to experience the world and themselves, mixing adventure, movement, culture and room to slow down.

AdventureMovementWellbeingCultureSpace to slow down and reconnect

For Shahad, travel is not about escaping life. It is about coming back to it, more present, more connected and more alive.

Sumaya in a green pine forest, carrying a long branch with both hands

Sumaya

Co-founder. Storytelling, movement and play.

Sumaya is a feral woman embodying the frequencies of wilderness and freedom. She walks the path of the heart, in service to love and the regeneration of life.

At nineteen, she left her homeland of Yemen and has been nomadic ever since. Her travels became a pilgrimage inward, an adventurous return to her own heart and the courage to live her authentic expression.

Along the way, she remembered something ancient: that the body is a temple of the soul, and a reflection of the Earth itself. That we belong to the land the way rivers and roots do. So she began living by natural time, rising and resting with the sun, moving with the seasons, wearing what grows and using what returns to the soil. Her life became simpler, slower, more ancestral, and more alive.

Today she lives as a student of the Earth, listening deeply and offering herself in service to her. Her medicine is expression: storytelling, movement, dance, and playful games that awaken the innocent joy we carry when we meet the wild.

StorytellingMovementDancePlayful gamesLiving by natural time

For Sumaya, joy is not a reward at the end of healing. It is the healing.

Our story

Two paths. Two worlds. One calling.

  1. 2014Istanbul

    Sumaya and Shahad meet at university.

  2. A decadeWorlds apart

    Thousands of miles between them, walking strangely similar paths.

  3. Early 2026Siwa Oasis

    Shahad follows the calling across the desert.

  4. TodayPrimal Sun

    Two paths become one, and this is only the beginning.

The two roads

In 2014, Sumaya and Shahad met at university in Istanbul. They came from different places and carried different stories, yet there was an instant familiarity between them. They connected through their cultures, their backgrounds and the experiences that had shaped them.

Life took them in different directions. For nearly a decade they lived thousands of miles apart, loosely in touch online. And although they were far from each other, something remarkable was happening: they were walking strangely similar paths.

Both became nomadic wanderers. Both travelled widely, lived in different countries and learned from unfamiliar cultures. Both found how much wild landscapes and simple ways of living can give back.

Both were also on journeys of self-discovery, learning to understand the wounds carried from their ancestral lands, Syria and Yemen, countries shaped by war, displacement and oppression. Travel became more than movement. Nature became medicine. Culture became a teacher. And the journey inward mattered as much as the journey across the world.

The meeting

Years later, something began pulling them back toward each other. Their conversations got deeper and their dreams began to overlap. They started to see that although their lives had unfolded in different places, they were being guided toward remarkably similar visions.

“Where are you? I need to come see you.”Shahad, early 2026

It wasn’t a plan that made logical sense. It was a feeling. Sumaya, the wild nomad that she is, was deep in the desert between Egypt and Libya, in a magical place called Siwa Oasis.

The journey was long, ending with a ten-hour night drive from Cairo through the desert. But still, Shahad followed the calling.

When they met again, nearly ten years after the first time, they sat down and traded the stories of the lives they had lived in between: the places, the lessons, the healing, the dreams each had carried alone. And suddenly so much made sense. They weren’t meant to keep walking parallel paths. They were meant to build something together.

Sumaya and Shahad laughing in the desert sun at Siwa Oasis, one close to the camera and one with both arms raised
Sumaya and Shahad, together again in Siwa.

The birth of Primal Sun

It took time. The vision needed room to breathe, and their separate dreams needed to find common ground. Over the following year they slowly brought together everything they had learned, lived and imagined.

That became Primal Sun: a space born from two women, two cultures and countless journeys, for people who feel the pull to experience the world differently. It is rooted in a shared love of wild places, conscious travel, cultural connection, adventure and the wisdom of Mother Earth.

We don’t believe travel is simply about where you go. It’s about who you become along the way.

And this is only the beginning.

The Leopard’s Path to the Sun is our first journey, and we would love you to be in the circle.

Come and walk with us.

Ten guests, two hosts, ten days in Sri Lanka’s central highlands. 13 to 22 January 2027.