A tale of two sisters.

Owned and operated by two sisters, Katerina Clauhs Dhand and Molly Crist, Onward Travel is a boutique travel company that designs and guides unique, thoughtful small group tours for individuals and customized trips for organizations to extend to their communities. We’re unabashedly enthusiastic about small group travel, and our itineraries are researched and pieced together carefully to ensure authentic, engaging trips that foster genuine connection to places and people.

Passionate and professional, curious and creative, we’re not your average tour operator: though Onward Travel is a relatively young company, a deep love of hospitality and adventure has been in our blood for generations. We owe our company’s existence (and our abiding love of Julia Child) to our mother and grandmother. We grew up on a farm in Bucks County, PA next door to The Cooking Cottage, a cooking school our mom and grandmother started when we were little girls. As an extension of their cooking school they hosted culinary tours, jetting off to far-flung spots in the U.S. and Europe—and showing us that the world is a delicious, exciting, interesting place just waiting to be explored.

In Tuscany Kat and Molly are always ready for aperitivo!

We also love coffee breaks and taking the opportunity to spend time on the water.

In 2012, after completing our own educations and beginning our respective careers, we started planning The Cooking Cottage’s trips—and loved it so much we would argue over who got to plan each one. So we launched Onward Travel to offer more tours and began partnering with some amazing small businesses to create trips themed around an interest—like beer, wine, food, yoga, civic engagement, art or, of course, general curiosity to see a new place. As Onward grows, we continue to believe in the power of thoughtfully designed small group travel to create unforgettable experiences and meaningful memories as we see the world together.

MOLLY CRIST

Jetsetting homesteader, apple farmer’s wife, Cornell Hotelie, food enthusiast, puppy-wrangler.

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Meet Molly.

Full of creative ideas and possessed of a warm, welcoming personality, Molly has long loved to dream big while getting the little details just right. Molly graduated from Cornell University’s Hotel School and then, giddy with entrepreneurial spirit, worked as an innkeeper, owned and operated a food truck in Michigan, coordinated leasing for the innovative Downtown Market Grand Rapids, taught cooking classes, and wrote for a variety of publications including Grand Rapids Magazine and Rapid Growth Media.

After a few years in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she and her husband Joel prepared to move back to his family business in New York. But first, the two of them traveled around the world for seven perfect months in 2015. Highlights include hiking in Patagonia, driving all over New Zealand, and squatting on a stool in Vietnam eating mind-blowing noodles. Now, Molly is striking the balance between jetsetter and homesteader, making her home on an apple orchard in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

KATERINA CLAUHS DHAND

Lover of good wine and beer, live music fan, art history geek, former culinary instructor and avid home cook, enthusiastic quilter, living in Europe.

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Meet Kat.

An intrepid traveler by nature, in high school Kat lived in Austria as an exchange student and has been hard to pin down ever since. Though she has spent the last few years in Philly (and will return one day), today she happily resides in Prague, Czech Republic, with her husband Neal and their pup, Ike. Kat graduated from Penn State with a degree in art history, then moved to London for grad school at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. During this time she traveled solo all over Europe, biking a good deal of it, moved to Berlin for a spell, and wrote her thesis about the role of contemporary art in Poland’s post-communist reconstruction period.

After a year or two back in the states working all kinds of jobs, mostly in hospitality, she took off again, settling in Beijing this time and taking the opportunity to get to know much of Asia. In China she fell in love with cooking, which had always been a serious hobby, and eventually moved home to take over The Cooking Cottage so her mother could retire. But planning the school’s annual culinary trips abroad was so satisfying that she left the cooking school to start Onward with Molly in 2013.

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Onward, traveler. Pack your bags, spin your globe, prepare to explore. Learn about a place, enhance your craft, live what you love.

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