Ghumakkar of the Year – 2012

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A big thank you to Manish, Vibha and DL for allowing us to stalk them, bombarding them with conflicting parameters, contradicting and cajoling them on every opportunity and being the source of constant worry for the last two weeks of 2012.

After that, we agreed on some common guidelines and shared them with our esteemed Jury and the game began. After multiple rounds of conversations, jigs and re-jigs, we arrived at the final list. But before I announce that, a special shout out for Rishi Raj Gupta, Sushant Singhal and Praveen Wadhwa for giving the winners a fighting finish. All three of you were favorites to more than one Jury member and need a special hug. Congratulations.

And now, to the blow of a thousand trumpets, here’s the announcement of the fab final four Ghumakkars of the Year 2013, in reverse alphabetical order:

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Ghumakkar Featured Author Interview with Suave and Sophisticated RRG

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Actually, yes. Ghumakkar has had a positive effect on my travelogs. I have learnt from several Ghumakkars – I was new to writing travelogs before meeting you guys. So, while writing comes naturally to me, I did learn the nuances of travel writing from Ghumakkar. Before I started writing travelogs at Ghumakkar, I was travelling to gratify myself, without noting down a lot of details. After joining the Ghumakkar club, I now try and learn more about the places I visit, people I meet, etc. This helps me improve upon the travelogs; ensuring that all the right details reach every reader. During the Ladakh ride, I used to right down every day’s details, sometime even on a paper-tissue when proper writing papers were not available! Even images! Earlier, I was nor much into clicking images; now I do so more to share, and I must confess, Ghumakkars have been really generous with their praise about the photographs. It goes for videos too; I made my first ever travel video at Khardung La! I believe I still need to learn many more things that make a travelog meaningfully useful for others…

Other than that, my travelling habits haven’t changed much, though. I have always been a details-freak. Thus, doing homework about a place I am visiting is important for me. Ghumakkar, in fact, helps me ease up about travelling – may be, one day I will go backpacking in Europe, without the usual ado!

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Featured Author Interview : A walk with Praveen Wadhwa

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My father loved walking, he had a hard job. Railways employees seldom get any holidays as other government people in India. He was the in-charge of train’s maintenance crew who undertook the mechanical and physical repairs of all trains, goods or passenger carriers. Bhatinda is one of the biggest railways establishments in whole world and he walked a lot on his job because each goods train is about a kilometer long and as a part of his job he had to walk around each train at least once; sun or rain, hot or cold, day or night.
We all three brothers love walking. We all brothers went to public schools. Our school was far away and we walked to our school and then college was even farther and we either walked there or took our cycle. One by one we all three brothers immigrated to USA but love of walking stayed in our blood. Even my uncles and cousins love to walk. When we all get together then we take a long walk in the wilderness.

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Ghumakkar Featured Author Interview – Presenting Romantic Ritesh Gupta

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घुमक्कड़ - आप घुमक्कड़ी का शौक कब से रखते हैं? यह बचपन से लगी हुई लत है या फिर आपने बड़े होने पर आपने इसे अपनाया है?
रीतेश –  वैसे तो बचपन से ही मैं अपने परिजनों के साथ पता नहीं कहाँ-कहाँ गया पर अपने होश में (उस समय भी काफी छोटा था) सर्वप्रथम मैं अपने माता पिताजी और उनके मित्रों के साथ वैष्णो देवी और उसके बाद हरिद्वार गया था । इस यात्रा से मैं बहुत प्रभावित हुआ और घूमने के भूत मेरे सर पर चढ़ गया, पर छोटा होने के कारण माता पिता के बिना नहीं जा सकता था । फिर इस यात्रा काफी साल बाद सन 1995 में अपने आठ मित्रों के साथ स्वछन्द रूप से मैं वैष्णो देवी और पत्नीटॉप अपने परिजनों के बिना गया । उसके बाद मैं अक्सर अपने मित्रों के साथ नई-नई जगह सोचकर जाने लगा । अब तक मैं देश की काफी नामी-गिरामी स्थल घूम चुका हूँ और आशा हैं की आगे भी घूमता रहूगा । आजकल यदि साथ में घूमने वाले मित्र जाए तो बहुत हैं अन्यथा मैं अपने परिवार के साथ ही घूमने जाता हूँ । वैसे नंदन जी ! घूमना यह कोई लत नहीं बल्कि मेरा शौक हैं, मैं अपना समय के अनुसार और पूर्ण सहूलियत से घूमता हूँ  ।

घुमक्कड़ – माफ़ कीजियेगा रीतेश जी, पर हर शक्स अपनी हर लत के बारे में ऐसा ही कहता है | हे हे | 
रीतेश – हे हे 

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Featured Author Interview with Warm and Kind Mahesh Semwal

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For the month of August 2012, Mahesh is our ‘Featured Author of the Month’ and I had the privilege to talk to him again, this time armed with a formal agenda. I knew very well that I am carrying a lot of expectations from our community to know Mahesh more. Mahesh was traveling (what else) and was in Mumbai when we spoke and we had a hearty and honest chat, I know he is in ‘Sales Function’. Mahesh touched upon various subjects , from family to traveling to his current job and it was one of the most smooth and easy conversation I had. His simplicity and good hearted intentions were more than evident so without any further build-up, presenting Mahesh Semwal, in conversation with Ghumakkar.

Ghumakkar : Welcome Mahesh. Congratulations for being the ‘Ghumakkar Featured Author of the month’ for Aug 2012.
Mahesh : Thank you Nandan. It is a privilege and Ghumakkar is a family for me and there is no greater joy then to have a moment of celebration with near and dear one, so thanks once again.

Ghumakkar: I know, I have asked you this question before but for the benefit of our readers, please share the story on how did you find Ghumakkar ?
Mahesh: Sure. I would again repeat the same story. (hehe he). As you know, I make an annual pilgrimage to Dehradun

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घुमक्कड़ विशिष्ट लेखक साक्षात्कार – एक बातचीत प्रज्ञ और मृदु मनु के साथ

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घुमक्कड़ –  अपने बारे में ऐसा कुछ बताएं जो किसी घुमक्कड़ को नहीं पता हो| अपने परिवार से भी परिचित करवाएं|
मनु - मै जो भी काम करता हूं बडी लगन से ,इतनी जितनी की कोई और शायद ही करे , मै स्कूल और कालेज में पढाई के अलावा सांस्कृतिक कार्यक्रमो ,सुलेख  और अन्य प्रतियोगिताओ में बढचढकर भाग लेता था । मै बैडमिंटन , शतरंज और क्रिकेट खूब खेलता हूं अब भी चाहे साथ में छोटे बच्चे ही हों । संगीत मुझे प्रिय है और हजारेा गाने जिनमें कि ज्यादातर दर्द भरे और सूफी गाने और गजले हैं मेरे याद हैं  । मैने स्कूल कालेज और रामलीला के मंच तक में भाग लिया है ।
 
दसवीं के बाद मैने इंटर की पढाई प्राइवेट की क्योंकि मै  खुद कमाने लगा था जो आज तक जारी है । 
 
16 साल की उम्र में मैने अपने बडे भाई के साथ मिलकर एक पब्लिक स्कूल खोला था जो मेरे भाई की 1999 में अचानक मृत्यू होने के कारण दो साल ही चल पाया । उसके बाद मैने कम्पयूटर हार्डवेयर का कोर्स किया और अपना कम्पयूटर सैंटर खोला । 22 साल की उम्र में जनवरी 2004 में लवी से प्रेम विवाह हुआ जिसे घरवालो की रजामंदी मिल गयी थी और दिसम्बर 2004 में  बेटी अनुष्का ने जन्म लिया । लवी कम्पयूटर सिखाती थी और मै उनका खरीदने बेचने और रिपेयर का काम करता था  । 2007 में मेरे पिता की मृत्यू के बाद मेरी नौकरी उनके स्थान पर मृतक आश्रित में लग गयी । अब मेरे परिवार में मेरी माताजी , मेरी एक बडी बहन समता त्यागी जो कि श्री राजकुमार त्यागी निवासी गढमुक्तेश्वर से ब्याही हैं , मेरी पत्नी लवी और बेटी अनुष्का हैं

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Featured Author Interview – In conversation with Moody and Passionate SilentSoul

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Thank you SS for the wonderful conversation and sharing so many personal details and valuable insight and advice with us. As promised, here is the Bonus offering. For the first time, we have a 100 seconder video interview with SS. All the video encoding, mixing has been done by SS and to balance the effort put by SS, I traveled to Jhansi fort to ask these questions. May be this becomes another trend in future conversations.

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Featured Author Interview : In conversation with the literary and lovable DL

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Ghumakkar: You like to be called as DL. Multiple times you have requested (and reminded) people to address you as DL. Why ? What is the story behind this ?
DL: Heh Heh. Well, Yes. Let me first affirm again that I wish to be addressed as DL. Just DL, nothing before or after. It makes me feel more warm, more closer. I do not like salutations and lets keep it that way.

Well, as you would know, I am from Andhra Pradesh. My full name is Dhanalakota Lakshmi Narayan (धनालकोटा लक्ष्मी नारायण ). We use surname as a prefix and amongst the boys of my generation every other person in Andhra was either a Laxmi Narayan or some other Narayan. Calling just Narayan was even more confusing so my classmates started calling me DL and it stuck on. All through, my friends, my close peers, and now you and people at Ghumakkar call me DL. And that is what it should be. Lol.

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Featured Author Interview – In conversation with lyrical and thoughtul Manish Kumar

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Ghumakkar – By now, a lot of Ghumakkars know quite a bit about your love for traveling and undying passion for music. Please tell us something about your personal life. How a regular day unfolds for Manish ?
Manish – Yes, my love for traveling or Ghumakkari is probably quite popular and as you said that my undying passion for music keeps me awake and working for long time. Let me go back and share my story beginning from school.

I did my complete schooling from Patna, a city which has been there for ages. (Read Mahesh’s story on Patna – here ) Then I moved to Ranchi to finish my engineering from BIT, Mesra. That was close to 20 years back. I quickly moved to Faridabad, a suburb of National Capital Delhi, and worked briefly before going back to academics to finish my Masters from Roorkee. I joined SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) in 1997 at Ranchi and been here since then.

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Vishal Rathod in a tête-à-tête with Ghumakkar

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I am fairly prepared for going through this kind of stuff, and often multiple times and having learnt through trial-and-error, I believe that if you hang-in long enough, you would get through. In this particular case, I could sense the perseverance. I had my doubts but I kept my belief intact. More weeks went by and Vishal, the alert among you would have made this out, and myself continued to find our ways together, stitching stories and getting better with every new day. We hanged on (or hung on, whatever) and it is been less than a year and I am so proud to share with all of you (one more time) that Vishal is our ‘Ghumakkar Featured Author for April 2012’. I had the opportunity to talk to him early this month and here is the conversation we had with Vishal over phone and email, where we discussed spirituality, travel, NASA and much more.

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Binsar Eco Camp – Hotel Review

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Rooms are humble and washrooms are utilitarian. If you are looking at spending time indoors over cosy conversations and luxurious room-service then this is not the place. Rooms are best used for sleeping (and do a good job with that) and then you should be outdoors. Room fittings, furniture, bathroom fittings are all there for their functionality, they are comfortable and value for money.

Bed sheets were OK (not crisp as in Chaukori) but I would blame that on rainy season.

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Ghumakkar Featured Author Interview with Professor Manish Khamesra

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I often cherish the only trip I did with the couple in 2002 (or may be before) to Orchha. Countless evenings of Tea, Rajasthani namkeens, sitting on those cool white marble floors at their place, discussing books, religion, morals, Hindi poetry and numerous stupid things which we do when we are young. Even the local market (the now famous sector 18 of Noida) was not at all busy and one can just sit alongside those rickety fountains and spend the evening, doing nothing. Sometimes we would polish the day off with a movie at Dharamplace or Alka theatre which still looked and acted like being in 60s, frozen in time. Old world charm is what some say. When you meet your old friends you always feel the warmth of assurance, the ether which connects you is just viscous enough to hold you together without restricting any freedom.

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