November Newsletter

India Travel Blog Newsletter is sent approximately once a month (sometimes less frequently), summarizing the previous month’s activity and giving a glimpse of the coming month on the website. Subscribe to the newsletter by keying in your email address in the box on the top of the sidebar. Here is a copy of this month’s newsletter, dispatched today.

Hello!

Here is the November edition of India Travel Blog Newsletter. I hope this is coming to you at a time when you are making plenty of travel plans for the coming holiday season, or already travelling! Here is a quick summary of travel content on the India Travel Blog in the last one month.

November 2010 Calendar. The desktop calendar for November is an image of travellers gazing at the beautiful sunset from Hemakoota Hill in Hampi.

Photo Essays. We have had four photo-essays published in October, listed below. In future, photo essays will become more frequent and will contribute significantly to the content of India Travel Blog, but without any compromise in stories that I regularly post.

1. Flowers of Sikkim
2. Skiing in the Himalayas
3. Wild Dogs of Kanha National Park
4. Chandradrona’s Fog – An attempt to capture the foggy monsoon landscapes of Chikmagalur, Karnataka

With a recent change to India Travel Blog, you can now access all the photo essays ever published on the blog in last five years using one single link. There are more than forty of them at the moment. See them all the photo essays

Stories from Ladakh. There are two stories from the long series of posts on Ladakh – one on falling into a tourist trap at the villages of Dha-Hanu and another one on a quick visit to Tso Kar Lake.

Other stories

1. Mysore Palace – A short visit to Mysore Palace with images of its exteriors and description of its elegant interiors.
2. The travel photography story published in November is on photographing landscapes. Winters are a great time to shoot beautiful landscapes. Read this post before you head out with a camera.
3. Not packing light. I always hear advices about the virtues of packing light. I have never managed to be one of those people who travel with very little baggage. I end up carrying a lot of stuff wherever I go. Here is my case about not packing light during my journeys.

In November, you will be seeing more photo essays on the blog and stories from Sikkim and Ladakh. Look out for some avian images from Bharatpur and landscapes from Corbett National Park. Happy travels!


Categories: newsletter

October Newsletter

India Travel Blog Newsletter is sent approximately once a month (sometimes less frequently), summarizing the previous month’s activity and giving a glimpse of the coming month on the website. Subscribe to the newsletter by keying in your email address in the box on the top of the sidebar. Here is a copy of this month’s newsletter, dispatched yesterday.

Hello!

It is two months since the earlier newsletter was sent out early in August. And it has been such eventful two months that I can’t help make this a long one. I hope you have the patience to read till the end. Here is a quick summary of the newsletter to begin with.

1. Five years of India Travel Blog + Facebook Page
2. Desktop Calendar for October 2010
3. My inverviews on the web
4. Photo Essays
5. Posts from Ladakh
6. Travel Photography Articles
7. Featured Guest Posts – Less known heritage sites
8. Other posts

Five Years of India Travel Blog

The first news I want to share is on the completion of five years of India Travel Blog. In these five years, the blog has seen more than a million visitors who have come to read more than 750 posts. Read my detailed post on the journey so far – Five years of India Travel Blog

India Travel Blog is now also on facebook. The facebook page doesn’t merely reflect the posts on the blog; it also features some larger pictures, collection of images and (sometimes) anything related to travel and photography. Many of the photographs uploaded of the page have detailed captions. Join our facebook pages on the journey of seeing India and photographing its beauty.

Calendar

October 2010 calendar is now online. It is an image of an array beetlenut trees standing perfect straight and parallel to each other on a foggy day. Download it and set it up as your wallpaper.

My interviews on the Web.

Technology news portal Techgoss has a very long interview of me, where I talk about my profession as a photographer and travel writer and the journey into becoming one. TravelByU, a community travel website has featured my interview on the occasion of completing five years of India Travel Blog, where they ask me about travel writing and photography.

Photo Essays.

Many of my readers have told me that they love to see a lot of pictures on the blog. I bow and comply. Since last few months, I am making the site picture heavy, loaded with many photo features and and single image posts. In the two months since last newsletter, I have posted six photo essays.

1. Freedom Park, Bangalore
2. Faces of Ladakh
3. Ladakhi Children
4. Nandi Hills
5. Busy Monks of Ladakh
6. Gaurs of Kanha

I will soon be adding a new category called photo-essays, where you will be able to find all photo features till date in one place. You can also see other photos posted on the blog here.

Posts from Ladakh

We have had two posts from the ongoing travelog series on Ladakh since the last newsletter dispatch. There are more posts from Ladakh on the unfortunate cloudburst.

1. Korzok Gustor Festival is a vibrant festival in the remote Changthang region, where locals dress up at their best and come to the monastery to meet their old buddies and see the monks perform masked dances at the monastery
2. Korzok Fu is a lush green oasis in the arid mountain regions of Ladakh, where a group of nomadic changspa people had camped when I was there. The place is so full of life – lush grass, gurgling streams and yaks grazing happily in the pasture – I fell in love instantly. But I even got caught in a sudden storm but quickly found shelter in a nomad’s tent!
3. Also see – a story on the monasteries of Ladakh, published in Terrascape Magazine

I also wrote two very long posts on the cloudburst disaster that devastated Leh and many other parts of Ladakh.

1. The Leh Cloudburst FAQ – What happened and why were the damages so high.
2. After the cloudburst – should you go to Ladakh?

Travel Photography Articles

1. Freezing a performance – pointers on capturing stage shows and cultural events
2. Photographing Children

Featured Guest Posts – Less known heritage sites

Travel Writer Lakshmi Sharath, who writes at http://backpakker.blogspot.com has been a writing a series on ‘less known heritage sites.’ She has a list of very interesting places that few of us know about.

1. Mandagapattau – Pallave Cave Temple near Chennai
2. Alamparai Fort
3. Chola Temple at Darasuram

Other Stories

1. Book Review – Geography of Bliss – A book on author Eric Weiner’s search for happiness across the world
2. Places around and Delhi – A compilation of popular weekend destinations in Delhi with links to detailed travelogues.

I hope you are enjoying the stories on India Travel Blog. I am all ear to your feedback; please share your thoughts and feedbacks in the comments section of the blog. The coming months on the blog will see a greater focus on images, though not at the expense of information and experiences that I write.

With Diwali coming up a month ahead and a series of festivals and holidays that will follow, 2010 travel season has almost begun. Have a great time and discover beautiful places! Happy Travels!


Categories: newsletter

August Newsletter

India Travel Blog Newsletter is sent approximately once a month (sometimes less frequently), summarizing the previous month’s activity and giving a glimpse of the coming month on the website. Subscribe to the newsletter by keying in your email address in the box on the top of the sidebar. Here is a copy of this month’s newsletter, dispatched today.

Hello,

Here is the August edition of India Travel Blog Newsletter, bringing you a summary of major stories on the blog in last two months and an insight into stories that you will get to read in the coming days. Below is a quick look at the contents of the newsletter.

1. Desktop Calendar
2. Stories from Ladakh (Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri)
3. Thrissur Pooram
4. Wildlife images from Kanha
5. Monsoon stories 5. Buying photo prints for your wall

Calendar. August 2010 desktop calendar features a portrait of Sambar Deer from Kanha National Park. Download the image at 1280×800 or 1024×768 as a desktop wallpaper calendar for this month.

Bike Ride to Pangong Tso. The main feature story of June-July was on a difficult bike ride from Leh to Pangong Tso, during which my bike broke down once. I had great difficulty crossing a rogue stream and riding on bad roads. Yet, the fabulous views of the lake was worth all that trouble. Read the six-part series on the Bike Ride to Pangong Tso.

Tso Moriri. Tso Moriri is another beautiful large lake in Ladakh. Read about the first impressions on the lake in an ongoing series of posts.

1. Arriving at Tso Moriri
2. The first impression
3. Images of Tso Moriri

In August, look out for stories on a monastic festival at Tso Moriri, where I saw high spirited Ladakhis hanging out watching the monks perform mask dances.

Images from Kanha. I spent a few days in Kanha National Park this summer, just before the park was about to close for monsoons. I have been posting images of birds and animal life from the national park. See them all here.

Images of Thrissur Pooram. Thrissur Pooram is a grand celebration involving a large procession of elephants, held every summer in April-May. See images of this year’s Thrissur Pooram celebration.

Monsoon Stories on India Travel Blog. If you are looking for some travel ideas for for the monsoon months, see this post on a compilation of all that is ever posted on India Travel Blog about the monsoons so far.

Buying photo prints for your wall. Now you can order prints of all images posted on India Travel Blog so far and get it delivered at your doorstep. The images will be printed on one a very high quality printer using imported paper. You can also opt to get it framed. If you are looking for something beautiful to hang on your living room wall, go here and request for prints.

This year, Ladakh has been seeing a huge surge in number of visitors, thanks to the resounding success of the movie ‘Three Idiots’. This mountain region will continue to be the focus on India Travel Blog, though it will be mixed with several other features. In the next month, I will be posting stories from Tso Moriri, several images from my recent trips and posts from Kerala and Kanha National Park. Do drop by to read more stories. Now you can also see a series of posts on Ladakh on one page.

Thanks!