Our Story

Behind the name Mindres Alaris are two family members who chose to build something meaningful together.

Mindres Alaris is our shared pen name and the creative voice behind Mindres — a family-run brand built around thoughtful products, practical tools, and ideas inspired by meaningful journeys.

Long before there were books, journals, digital projects, or products waiting to be brought to life, there was one small adventure that has stayed with us for decades.

As children, we spent our summer holidays at our grandparents’ home in the countryside. One evening, we quietly began preparing for what we considered a real journey. We packed our backpacks with blankets, food, and everything else we believed true explorers might need.

Before sunrise the following morning, while everyone was still asleep, we slipped out of the house and set off on our great expedition.

In reality, we did not travel very far. We walked only a couple of hundred metres and made our camp among the grapevines at the far end of our grandparents’ land. But to us, it felt as though we had travelled almost to the edge of the world.

When the rest of the family woke up and discovered that we were missing, they began looking for us. A few hours later, our grandfather eventually found our hiding place.

We were slightly disappointed. We had imagined ourselves so far away that no one would be able to find us until the end of the day.

But being discovered did not bring our adventure to an end. We stayed among the grapevines, continued our imaginary journey, and enjoyed the rest of the day as though we were still somewhere far beyond the horizon.

Looking back, we understand that the true meaning of a journey has never depended on the number of steps you take or the distance you travel.

What matters is what happens within you along the way: the emotions you experience, the discoveries you make, the way the journey shapes your inner world, and the memories that remain vivid even decades later.

Sometimes the shortest journeys leave the deepest footprints.

Many years have passed since that little expedition among the grapevines.

Life eventually led us along different paths and even to different countries. Today, Inna lives in the United Kingdom, while Victoria has built a home with her family in Spain. We developed different professional skills, gained different experiences, and built lives that may appear very different from the outside.

Yet our curiosity, imagination, and desire to create meaningful things together never disappeared.

Inna Poliakova is a psychologist, marathon runner, and passionate traveller living in the United Kingdom. After completing her first Camino de Santiago, she knew with certainty that it would not be her last. She discovered what so many pilgrims understand: the Camino has a unique way of continuing to call you back.

Her professional understanding of people, emotions, habits, and personal transformation, together with her own experiences on the trail, shapes many of the ideas behind the books, journals, and resources we create.

Victoria Kosheliuk lives in Spain with her husband and two children. With more than ten years of experience in IT, digital systems, and product development, she brings technological knowledge, structure, and practical thinking to every Mindres project.

She transforms ideas into intuitive, reliable, and thoughtfully designed products that can become part of people’s real lives and journeys.

Together, we combine two complementary perspectives: an understanding of people and the ability to build practical systems around their real needs.

We did not begin by trying to create a large business.

We simply started making the things we wished had existed when we needed them ourselves.

We created resources that could help us prepare more thoughtfully, travel with greater confidence, notice more of what was happening along the way, and preserve the experiences we did not want to lose once the journey was over.

Gradually, we realised that these were not needs experienced only by us.

Other travellers were looking for the same things.

They wanted practical guidance without unnecessary complexity. They wanted meaningful products created from real experience rather than abstract ideas. They wanted tools that could support not only the physical journey, but also the emotions, memories, and personal meaning connected with it.

That realisation became the foundation of Mindres.

Our projects now include books and guides — like The Camino Companion, built from insights and advice gathered from experienced pilgrims in the community we've built, many of whom have walked the Camino several times, some more than four — the Camino Companion Stone, a pilgrim journal, AI Backpacker, and other products and ideas designed for travellers, pilgrims, and people who believe that a journey can become much more than movement from one place to another.

Each project may take a different form, but they all begin with the same question:

What would make this journey more thoughtful, more supportive, and more meaningful?

We once packed blankets and food into our childhood backpacks and set off towards the far end of a vineyard, convinced that we were travelling to the edge of the world.

Today, the journeys are longer and the backpacks look different.

But the reason we continue to set out remains much the same: curiosity, discovery, imagination, and the belief that the most meaningful journeys do not simply take us somewhere new.

They leave something within us that we may carry for the rest of our lives.