Ghumakkar Editorial Monthly Digest – December 2012

Greetings to the Ghumakkar Family!

On behalf of the entire Editorial team, I wish you a Merry Chritsmas and a happy, prosperous and spectacular New Year 2013!

The months of November & December mark several festivities for every religion. Christmas being the highlight, is celebrated by all with joy & enthusiasm. It is a festival of love, warmth, gifts and celebration! Did your Secret Santa or Santa Claus himself surprise you with a whole lot of gifts this time?

In this edition of the Monthly Digest, we have the following sections:

Welcome New Authors
First on Ghumakkar (FoG)
Author Bootcamp
Inside News
What’s Up?
Featured Author of the month of December 2012
Featured Author of the month of January 2013
Featured Story of the month of December 2012

Welcome New Authors

Every month, we have one or mostly more additions to the Ghumakkar Family. We are proud that we are growing! As we have new members on-board, we want you to know them too! Without much ado, let us welcome the Ghumakkar New Authors- Diptarko,Hemant Vijay, Jayant, Pradeep Kumar and Rakesh

Diptarko:
Writing his experience about a trip to the St.Martin’s Island, Diptarko has made his striking entry into the Ghumakkar fraternity. While his writing has won accolades, the pictures have captivated many people too! Admitting that he is driven by intense wanderlust, he introduces himself as an IT Engineer, working only to pay his EMIs but traveling and writing to keep himself alive! We clearly see that he is definitely a Ghumakkar at heart!

Hemant VijayHemant joined Ghumakkar on 20th November’12 with his first post published on 23rd December’12. Being a very fluent and elegant Hindi writer, he gathered the attention of the Hindi and English authors alike! Expressing his wish to travel across entire India, he says his journey is still young and is hopeful to see more places in due course of time!

Jayant Kodwani:
The holy Ganges has struck zillions of people with awe with her sanctity and serenity. Haridwar thus gains the fame with which it stands so proud today! Be it a road trip or a yatra with the family, tourists cant wait enough to visit Haridwar. With a reason to beat the hustle bustle of Delhi and to relax on the banks of the Ganges , Ghumakkar author Jayant began an adventurous trip from Delhi to Haridwar. His post describing this trip marks his entry into Ghumakkar family. To tell you a little about him, he is a car ‘n’ bike lover; works with Bank of America and confesses to be a Ghumakkar at heart! Isn’t he a perfect fit to our family?? Welcome him!

Pradeep Kumar

To add another feather to the cap of Hindi author community, Pradeep made his entry to Ghumakkar with his debut post “ग्रीष्मावकाश यात्रा – दिल्ली से डलहौज़ी”.
He is an Engineer by profession who finds his life really busy, yet, makes some time off for his urge to travel. Uttarakhand and the northern parts of India are his favorites and wishes to see more and we hope that he writes more too!

Rakesh

Passionate about hills, nature and long driving, Rakesh loves to visit new places! He has an insatiable thirst to explore the Himalayas too. His first post was published on 29th December and is about a Solo Bike trip to Deoriatal! It has some of the best photographs of that place!
Welcome aboard Rakesh!

Welcome you all once again. We hope that you all make some exciting trips and that you come back and share your experience with us!

FOG posts

It is a matter of pride to see that every month we have many such posts which qualify as FoG. FoG posts mark their uniqueness with the content, places or experience. To house such posts means to add more gems to our treasure!

We have 13 such posts this month, a record breaking number indeed! Please go to the links below to read them all, if you haven’t read them yet:
बीकानेर- राजमहल का भ्रमण
बीकानेर- जूनागढ़ किला, शस्त्रों का जखीरा, चित्रकारी का खजाना
SITA SAMAHIT STHAL, SITAMARHI, UP: Where Sita Maa goes underground
Sankaram and Kotturu
St. Martin’s – A Hidden Coral Island
Hilltop monasteries on the seaside
WATER KINGDOM : An Ecstatic and Euphoric Experience
Rugged and scenic Puttaparthi (Andhra Pradesh)
RAMNAGAR FORT
A Tale of Two Temples
हेरिटेज मेला
Makkah – Performing the Hajj Pilgrimage – 3
मन्डौर-रावण की ससुराल

You can also browse through them at: FoG Posts. Please do write back to us if you feel we have missed any post which , in your opinion, fits into this category.

Author Bootcamp

At Ghumakkar, we mentor the novice authors on how they can independently schedule their posts. We guide them through the process starting from creating a new post on the website till it reaches the scheduling phase. The essentials involved in this process are also told to them and we take responsibility in making them comfortable while they are completing the bootcamping.

This month too, we took this up and Vipin underwent the Bootcamping process.There are a few more authors who are going through bootcamp but for some reason could not complete it this month. We are sure to gear them up by next month!

Inside News

The year-end marks the beginning of the Ghumakkar of the Year selection process. The process is on and our 3-member Jury is putting their effort in deciding on the name(s) of the most deserving candidates.
The selection process is similar to what we followed last time. The Jury’s decision together with the Editorial crew’s vote will finalize the winner(s) for the Grand Title.
As we are through this process, we are realizing that it is an immensely difficult task to identify one or few names out of the entire bunch of precious authors! Should we thank you all for giving us this tough challenge? Indeed!
From this Edition of the newsletter, we will be announcing the “Featured Author of the Next month” here. The intention is not to break the little surprise element, but to give an advance notification on who the next chosen one is! Scroll down to know who the Featured Author of the Month of January 2013 is!

What’s Up? – News from the Travel World

Kerala promoting green tourism at 6th edition of shopping festival:
The “Go Green” Mantra hits Kerala tourism too. At the 6th edition of the Kerala Shopping Festival, Kerala is promoting green tourism and is hopeful of receiving 10 per cent more visitors this year during the sixth edition of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival over last year’s 10 million.

Will the Go Green attitude really bring more tourists to Kerala or is it just another attention grabbing gimmick? Click here to read the entire article.

Dense fog disrupts air, rail traffic in Delhi:
Come winter and the air and rail traffic get victimized because of the weather disruptions. Especially the northern parts of India and Delhi as a typical example. The railways cancelled six trains and rescheduled the departure timings of close to 50 trains.
According to a Northern Railway spokesperson, more than 80 trains, including the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi Express, arrived in the city several hours behind schedule. At the airport, low visibility conditions were in place for a little over 17 hours during which time 433 flights operated.
Read the entire article here

Second Tea Tourism Festival begins in Darjeeling:
Do you like to taste different tea varieties? Are your senses sensitive enough to differentiate the subtle variations in the flavors? If yes, then Darjeeling is calling you! The Gorkhaland Territorial Authority (GTA) in Darjeeling, West Bengal, has organized a 17 day-long tea tourism festival, with an aim to boost tourism in the state.

Not just tea, but folk and tribal entertainment programmes are on the agenda too. Isn’t it an amazing combination and a sure shot reason to pack our bags and flee to Darjeeling? Click here to read more!

Featured Author of the month of December 2012

Ghumakkar Featured Author Interview with Suave and Sophisticated RRG

RRG is an avid biker who adores his marvelous bike ; for him riding gives more pleasure than probably anything else in the world! Or should we humbly say, he is definitely head-over-heels in love with his bike and is ready to go anywhere across the globe on it? Well well…This amazing equation between man and his magnificent machine has produced brilliant motorcycle Diaries which we have not only read, but have loved it too!
Presenting to you, a snippet from the interview of our Featured Author of the Month of December 2012 – RRG

“Ghu : How did this acquaintance with Ghumakkar happen? Search engines?
RRG : Yes, exactly. How else one would find you?

Ghu: Well, when we started many years back, in 2007, I knew everyone personally, who ever then wrote on Ghumakkar. Actually even the ones who commented! I have made uncountable and sometimes incorrigible phone calls requesting people to read and comment. He He. So it is humbling to face that people are finally not only finding us without me chasing them, but actually writing here. What were you looking for?
RRG: I think it was early this year, probably February 2012. I was looking for information on ‘Pushkar’ and If I remember correctly, I found a story on ‘Brahma Temple’ here. (May be this one – https://www.ghumakkar.com/2012/03/24/पुष्कर-ब्रहमा-जी-का-एकमात/ ) and then started reading more of it.

Ghum: And then I think you travelled and wrote about that on Ghumakkar.
RRG: Yes, that was my log here. Before writing that story, I have read few stories here and I really wanted to write one here so as soon as Puhskar Trip happened, my first ‘Motorcycle Diary’ at Ghumakkar was born.

Ghum: We are so glad that it did. What ‘drove’ you to write on Ghumakkar?
RRG: Because I tremendously liked the word, ‘Ghumakkar’. It truly embodies the tagline, Traveling is Good. It is simple, clear and to the point. It is like the most appropriate thing which I found and it looked something which belonged to me, so why not write. :-)….”

Featured Author of the next month : January 2013

Shubham Sarcar: Featured Author of the Month of January’13
This is a new section in the Monthly Digest where we wish to highlight the name of the Featured Author of the Next month. The intention of this is purely to give a one liner mention of the chosen one for the next month.
The Ghumakkar Featured Author of the Month of January 2013 is Shubham Sarcar. Congratulations Shubham! You are an asset in our community and we have all loved to read your stories!
You can read more about him in the Featured Author Interview which will be published on our website on January 15, 2013.

Featured Story of the Month of December 2012

Makkah-Performing the Hajj pilgrimage

The birthplace of Prophet Muhammad and the holiest city for the followers of Islam, Mecca (pronounced as Makkah) is a city in the Hejaz, Saudi Arabia.Dr.Tahernarrates to us his experience in the holy land and takes us on a virtual tour to this city or sanctity and divinity. An excerpt from his story is here for you :
“…Unlike pilgrims who are brought from overseas to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I had only 5 days in which to complete the rituals that make up the official visit to Hajj. These five days are the “core days” of Hajj. In fact, overseas pilgrims, including those from India, come much before the actual date for the performance of the Hajj, and spend their money and time doing whatever suits their temperament. Once the dates for Hajj have passed, most tourists often hang on forever … or at least a week more. No such luxury for me.

I was going to Hajj with several of the doctors from my hospital along with their family members (in some cases). We were a contingent of 20+ with children and old persons in addition to the six or seven of us, the doctors. Arrangements had been made with a travel organizer by the name of Sk. Jamal for his bus to pick us all up from the village, and to bring us all back at the end of the pilgrimage…..”

Even though the last part of this series is awaited and would be published in a couple of days (it is coming in first week of Jan), this story stood as the most deserving candidate for the title of the Featured Story of the Month. The series is narrated from the heart and is definitely unique and surely needs to be celebrated. I would like to thank Dr.Taher for taking us virtually to the Holy place of Hajj and allowing us to get a glimpse of one of the most revered places in the world.

A year has gone by; Ghumakkar has seen many new authors coming in; while some authors have grown to be the flag-bearers of Ghumakkar, some others are getting equipped with posts which are sure to steal everyone’s heart! This year, at Ghumakkar, we made some changes to the Newsletter and made it to the Monthly Digest which you are reading now. We hope you are liking these changes and I am sure we are definitely not done here!
We value your feedback and want to hear from you about your opinions and feedback. It really helps us in making Ghumakkar a comfortable place where all of us can easily share and enjoy our travel stories.Please write to us @ info@ghumakkar.com

As a closing note for this year’s last edition of the Monthly Digest, on behalf of the Editorial crew, I would like to congratulate the Monthly Featured Authors and the authors of the Monthly Featured Stories of the year 2012. Also, best wishes for all the forerunners in the race of the year 2012’s Grand title – “Ghumakkar of the Year 2012”!

Cheers!