Month: January 2018

travel solo

Why Solo Travelling Is The Best Self-Development Tool

Published by Dev

With the internet and our daily life, being swarmed by material on self-development, teaching us different ways to become a more superior self, one thing is clear — we all want a better version of ourselves and become more efficient than we are today. If we run fast, we want to run faster. If we speak one language, we want to speak many. If we already have an impressive personality, we still want to go one step further, defying all laws of our existence and become undeniably impressive… and the quest never ends. The problem is, however, we don’t know how, or we don’t have the time to work for it. Our little lives, bounded by schedules and responsibilities offer no scope for self-development. We are still doing the same thing that we were, three years ago. One day turns into the next and all those things that we desired to do, combined with all the personality traits we wanted to acquire, keep piling up until we eventually lose grip on life. So what to do? …

Hallan Valley

Hallan Valley: Himachal Pradesh’s Another Best Kept Secret

Published by Dev

There are some places in the world that keep a piece of you, places that time and again feel irresistible, regardless of your frequent visits there. Hallan Valley in Himachal Pradesh is one such place for me. And its tranquil locale, a friendly atmosphere, and an away-from-the-tourist-trail charm are in fact, the reasons. The first time I happened to visit Hallan Valley, it was a year and a half ago. I was returning from a solo motorbiking trip in Spiti Valley. But as I left Manali for Delhi, and rode about ten or twelve kilometres, towards Kullu (on old Manali-Kullu highway) I came across a dull looking signboard on the left. “Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna“ it read, and pointed toward uphill, with a bit more information about the road length and other mechanical gibberish. I can’t remember what else it said, but the term “Gram Sadak”, that translates to ‘village road’ in English, felt quite assuring. At 10 in the morning, the weather looked perfect to be riding on the Hallan Road (Google for where …

Badrinath temple

An Ideal Guide To Char Dham Yatra: Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath

Published by Dev

It is said in Hinduism, that no act can be more righteous and religiously pious than taking your parents on a pilgrimage to Char Dham. And I ended up living that statement, earlier in the year 2017, upon my mother’s continuous request to take her across to the Char Dham — the four holy sites for Hindus: Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath — in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. It happened when my mother kept requesting me to a point where any repeated denial felt like a hopeless try. The deal was, however, we were not going to book any of those lame Char Dham yatra tours that cover every experience possible — from fighting for the front seat in the tour-bus everyday, to sight-seeing more tourist places (that fall on route) than something religious, to sleeping in the smelly guesthouses ever — but nothing spiritually uplifting.   So taking no risk of that sort and regretting in the end, we agreed upon following my way — of literally backpacking to all the four sites of Char Dham. For …

Pottery in Padavedu

Padavedu In Tamil Nadu: An Idea Example Of A Progressive India

Published by Dev

Throughout all these years of travel, I have learned that every city, every town, has its own charm. You visit Dharamshala, in the Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, and you get a sense of reverence in its air; Shimla, on the other hand, despite being located in the same state has nothing to do with reverence and only makes sense as a hill resort buzzing with happy vacationers. Similarly, not every destination leave a deeper impression on life. Some do, while some don’t. But my recent visit to Padavedu, a cluster of villages centrally located among Vellore and Thiruvannamalai, in Tamil Nadu, was definitely one of those when you end up learning something useful in life — a kind of experience that helps you grow just as much within, as without. I visited Padavedu on a blog-tip with Srinivasan Services Trust, or SST, to learn a bit about sustainable living and various community-empowerment initiatives run by them. From pottery making to basket weaving, individual money generating activities to community services (like waste management and healthcare and education) SST teaches people …

Bamboo cottage Majuli island

Revisiting Majuli Island: India’s Largest River Island

Published by Dev

I remember back in the summer of 2015, I fell in love with the Majuli Island — a 450 sq km of an untouched land (and India’s largest river island) that appears to have been forgotten by today’s new-age influence and of any technology. Here people still pedalled a manual bicycle to work. Hand manoeuvred boats were preferred over the motored ones. What is often termed as India’s largest river island, Majuli Island, at least to me, revealed itself as a no man’s land where simmering mat of yellow rice fields and water meadows bursting with hyacinth blossoms were more in mass and number than there was life. More than two years later as I revisited Majuli in December 2017, to meet a friend, I figured that Majuli was still pretty much the same. If the rest of India was developing at a rate of 6, on a scale of 10, Majuli was still somewhere in decimals below 1. Roads were still deprived of any concrete. A chaay and a samosa still cost less than 10 Rupees. …

Nagaland border

Travelling In Nagaland — Is It Safe?

Published by Dev

“Though it’s totally peaceful at the moment and the local rebellion groups have agreed to a ceasefire, nothing can anyway happen to a tourist ever. Ye log, vaise bhi, tourist ko kkuch nahi karta (they mean no harm to tourists)” I clearly remember how brief and assuring the answer came to me the first time I inquired about the safety for a tourist traveling in Nagaland. And as I later repeated the same question, almost every two days, every time I saw an army personnel (to be honest, anyone wearing the camouflage pants!) I got the same answer. “For a tourist, Nagaland is completely safe.” And to tell you the truth, I wanted to believe that too — with all the goodness and faith in me. But given what we keep hearing about northeast India and with the indigenous Naga tribes always having maintained a deadly image to the outer world, it was just too tough for me to reconsider, at least without having any first-hand experience. Experiencing The Offbeat Nagaland My first experience of an …

How To Start A Travel Blog In 7 Easy Steps

Published by Dev

Want to start a travel blog, but not sure how? This guide will help you start your own travel blog in a few easy steps.  Before I start, let me warn you that travel blogging isn’t as easy as it looks. Bloggers like me rarely share the huge amount of behind-the-scenes disasters that go into making this lifestyle possible. My journey, too, has been a rollercoaster ride. But to tell you the truth, all the efforts were totally worth it. Travelling is already an interesting profession, and blogging makes it a little more exciting and motivating. Moreover, when you want to make travelling a full-time career, you need to look for ways to make money out of it. For me, there was no better option, than blogging. It has taken me more than one year to become a professional travel blogger – professional in the sense that I’ve now started making money from blogging. So today I want to share a useful guide about how to get started with blogging, including a few important tips I didn’t …

Starting A Travel Blog Hosted On Hostgator

Published by Dev

Recently I had bought a multi-domain hosting plan with Hostgator to start three new websites: one, for my campsite in Himachal Pradesh, one for the adventure motorbiking tours I organise in Ladakh and one, for a new travel blog I wanted to start for so long. Please don’t ask why I started a new travel blog, that’s a long story and is moreover not necessary to know here. But what’s necessary is the fact that I switched from Bluehost to Hostgator to start my new travel blog (PS: I’ve been using Bluehost for some time for FootlooseDev) and I did it for quite a few reasons. Starting A Travel Blog Hosted On Hostgator: A Better Price One thing that makes a big difference every time we go to the market to buy something is the price of the product (or service) and this was exactly what motivated me too to make my decision and go for Hostgator. Though the hosting packages by  Hostgator can be comparatively slightly expensive than that of Bluehost’s, from time to …