JETTING abroad for sunshine and sightseeing is something most of us take for granted. But when Amar Latif lost his sight in his late teens his dreams of travelling the world came crashing down as tour operators and holiday companies refused to take bookings from a blind person travelling alone.

The experience eventually drove the ambitious accountant from Glasgow to set up his own firm specialising in trips for the visually impaired. Now Latif has a new challenge – leading a trio of television comedians across Australia.

In a tie-up with Channel 4, Latif has been charged with getting Last Leg presenters Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker across the "red centre" of Australia, from Darwin to Sydney.

The show, which started life as a Paralympics round-up in 2012, is famed for its tongue-in-cheek take on disability and is dubbed "three guys with four legs talking about the week" in reference to both Hills and Brooker having each had one of their limbs amputated.

Latif said the comedy of a blind man guiding them across the outback was not lost on the presenters.

"A blind guy leading three comedians across the outback in Australia – what could possibly go wrong?," said Latif. "It was a bit of a shock for them, especially Alex and Josh – they were expecting stuff that they had seen before like barbecues on the beach in Sydney and drinking beer. But they didn't get much of that."

Instead the trip, filmed in October last year, saw them hunting for crocodiles, hanging out with drag queens and traversing the desert in a beat-up campervan – or flying over Ayers Rock with Latif at the controls.

"When I thought they needed a bit more help along the way I offered to fly them myself across Ayers Rock – I won't tell you who was brave enough to take up the challenge, but not all of them did.

"I had a co-pilot obviously, but I've flown before."

Latif, 41, was in his first year at Strathclyde University studying maths, statistics and finance when his eyesight suddenly deteriorated.

He had been diagnosed aged four with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative and incurable genetic disorder, which eventually robs sufferers of their sight.

"I was losing my sight from my early teens but it dramatically went when I was at university," said Latif. "A few months into the course I actually couldn't see enough to read.

"It was really hard at the beginning because one minute you can see and the next you're crashing into things, and you're thinking 'why did this have to happen to me?'.

"But you begin to realise that you have two choices: you can either sit on the sidelines watching the world go by, metaphorically speaking, or you roll up your sleeves and get involved. I decided that I wasn't going to be wrapped up in cotton wool for the rest of my life."

Instead of dropping out or switching to an easier course, Latif persevered and subsequently bagged a job as a graduate accountant with BT Cellnet.

However, Latif's desire to travel - and his frustration with the travel industry - persisted.

He said: "I approached lots of travel companies and basically faced a lot of rejections. They would say 'you're blind, you can't travel by yourself, you need to bring somebody with you' and I'd always say, 'look, I don't need a carer'.

"So I felt that frustration and out of that frustration I realised that in this world, if you want something that doesn't exist, you have two choices: you either do without or you build it yourself."

In 2004, Latif established Traveleyes, a package holiday company designed to fulfil the needs of blind people.

A year later, the firm began trading and Latif took a sabbatical from the corporate world to try and get the venture off the ground.

"My parents thought it was crazy that I was leaving a really well-paid job and setting up something so uncertain - a blind guy setting up a tour operator," said Latif.

"The challenge was, when you get to places, how can you get the most out of them? How was it going to work? Would the sighted travellers on the trips be paid employees, or volunteers?

"In the end we did what we do now: the sighted travellers come on the trips and in return for guiding and describing, they get to travel for up to half price. So the blind travellers get a very competitive price comparable with other travel companies, but the sighted folk get to travel for less."

The company now serves 50 destinations worldwide including Hawaii, Costa Rica and Peru.

Sighted travellers are partnered up with a different blind person each day.

"We've got lots of blind people on our books but we're always looking for sighted travellers," said Latif. "They don't need any experience of blindness – 80 per cent of them have never met a blind person before. It's open to solo travellers, couples or groups of friends. Most people in the group don't know each other but that's part of the fun."

Since setting up the company, Latif has skydived in Cuba, climbed Machu Picchu in Peru, crossed the floating islands on Lake Titicaca, and sailed down the Zambezi river in Africa.

Episode one of the Last Leg Down Under will air on Channel 4 on Friday, January 29.

Visit Traveleyes at: www.traveleyes-international.com