After contemplating on creating a facebook page for almost a year, India India Travel Blog is finally on facebook. Apart from being a convenient way to read posts on India Travel Blog, I will use it to make some mobile updates on the move, post photographs and share anything interesting (like links, stuff I bump into in real life and web, etc) on travel and photography. It will also be a place where I will make short posts that are too small to go here. You are more than welcome to post anything related to travel and photography on the wall. Click the ‘like’ button below to follow paintedstork on facebook.

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TravelByU, a community travel blog, features my interview on the occasion of India Travel Blog completing five years. The interview revolves around travel advice to international travellers, experience of being a travel writer and on photography.

TravelByU: What is it like being a freelance travel writer?  What are the best things, and what are the worst?

Arun: Let’s have the best things first. When you start writing about your journeys, you start seeing improvements in the way you travel. Because you know that you have to tell new stories to the world, you stay alert and look for interesting things. You go in search of something new that a few people would have seen. You research well before you go; you make sure that you talk to locals to gather all interesting information. Over time, you start seeing that each time you get out, you experience a lot more, see and do much more than a normal traveller would. Travel writers always ensure that they get the best out of their journeys..

Read the full interview at travelbyu.com

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“I have done a decent amount of travelling in last few years and the places I have seen are plenty. But I have not managed to keep a good record of these journeys. Often, when some one asks about some information on a place I have visited long ago, I end up guessing it badly or giving some abstract information. I hope to record my journeys in this blog so I can have a good track of everything I did. “

These were the first lines written on India Travel Blog more than five years ago.

I often forget birthdays. I forgot the fact that India Travel Blog completed five years of existence about a month ago. It came more as a discovery even to me when I was going through the archives and looking for something yesterday.

This blog, which started as a place to log my journeys, has since become much more than that. Although I do not entirely wish to admit it, it is perhaps true that India Travel Blog had a major role in changing many things in my life. It is because of this site that I received my first requests to write for travel magazine. It is this blog that helped me reshape my career as a photographer and travel writer from being an IT professional a few years ago. It helped me meet many people from whom I could learn a great deal about travel, photography, writing and even to live better.

If statistics were something that mattered, I think I have some decent numbers to show. These five years have seen more than 750 posts on the blog, seen by more than one million visitors. It gets more than a thousand people coming in every day looking for stories and information about travelling in India and has nearly 2000 subscribers who read the blog regularly. I do not know if this is impressive or not, but my own targets today are slightly different from achieving any kind of numbers.

I would like to make India Travel Blog to be full of highly readable travel stories that cover every aspect of travel in India. I have often been trying to find out what makes the best travel writing and have experimented different writing styles on the blog, but have not yet come up with the perfect answer.

My own idea of good travel stories will contain plenty of information about places and sights conveyed in such a manner that the reader doesn’t feel that he or she is reading a boring encyclopaedia. The writings should perhaps embed plenty of information in a smoothly flowing story that includes many anecdotes, some humour and wit that involves a lot of interaction with people at the destination. There are some posts on the blog where I have tried to build stories in this manner, but there are many that have not exactly met my own expectation. Good stories perhaps should also include analogies and metaphors that not only makes the reader get a good perspective of the destination, but also make him laugh at comparisons. I must also admit that embedding humour in my stories is not exactly my strength and it needs a lot of work, an improved sense of observation and finding new perspectives to every interaction. While I do make some attempts at it when I scribble my notes, I have kept away from making half-witty remarks or make desperate attempts to make something look funny. When it comes to including information in my stories without making it look heavy, I get a feeling that I have met some degree of success in embedding them within my experiences. But eventually it is for readers to decide.

Today, my goal with India Travel Blog is to consistently produce good quality photographs and travel writing that informs and entertains my readers. I would always like to hear from you on what would you like to see more on India Travel Blog, be it more serious travel writing, more humour, more information, more pictures or something entirely different. In the past, I have kept away from a few areas that every international travel e-zines or blogs often tend to post. That includes hotel reviews, giving too much advice and how-tos (like how to meet fellow travellers on the road, how to interact effectively with locals,..) to travellers, top-10 posts and such things which, I am not entirely sure, really helps the reader. But I know that when I made small attempts at such things before, they have been received well. It would be great to know your opinions on what would you like to see on this blog in the coming years.

Thank you for being with me in these five years.

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