Ghumakkar Editorial Monthly Digest – July 2013

Hello my dear readers!

July turned out to be a fascinating month entertaining us with experiences from many avid travelers. While some spoke about well-known destinations, some others spoke about some lesser known but interesting places. It has been a moderately calm month of Monsoon and a relatively accommodating one for us travelers. Did you all get to travel as planned or did the monsoon ruin your holiday? Tell us about it!

The period between mid July and mid August is called Aashada in Hindu calendar. This month is considered inauspicious by many Hindus and they refrain from starting any new task, be it purchase of any new item or property or making any specific plan for their future. But I am sure, we @ Ghumakkar will never stop planning our trips, will we? Be it Aashada or any other month, our spirits are high and always keep growing higher as we read the awe-inspiring stories on our forum.

Talk about our spirit and we know how the new authors are welcomed with open arms! They are embraced , encouraged and motivated by our profound authors and enable the newbies to bring out their best ,for us. This month’s new authors Avtar Singh and Anjan have charmed us similarly. You should read their stories to see their knack of adding new hues to our spectrum of posts. Without further ado, let me briefly introduce them to you.

Avatar Singh hails from the NCR ; loves to read books and to write too and believes in simplicity in the style of writing . His education has been mostly in Dehradun and is now in a job related to education. He marked his debut with his post – “एक जिन्दा-दिल शहर मथुरा” which got a roaring response and a great many number of comments. And within less time, his second post “सुनहरे अतीत की परछाईओं का एक गाँव: गोकुल” was also out. He seems to have already earned himself a great entry position. We hope that the trend continues and he remains everyone of our favorite! We welcome you, Avatar Singh-ji.

Anjan Das marked his entry with an interesting tale on “Garden of Five senses: A Journey with Joy” where he reveals his joy and happiness as he spent great times with his family in the Garden of Five Senses. Beautiful pictures of the garden showing colorful flora and some reality check about the maintenance of the garden are some of the highlights of his post. An engineer by profession, a traveler by choice and definitely a fluent writer by potential, he is our second newbie for the month. Welcome to Ghumakkar, Anjan!

It is not too long ago since we introducedRakesh Bawa as one such newbie. Now, we have him as our Featured Author of the Month of July. Congratulations Rakesh! You deserve a big round of applause! Rakesh
He is the author who gave us the wonderful series named “Meri Kashmir yatra“, who showed us the colors of Rajasthan in his series named “A trip to Mewar” and who has many more posts lined up for us in the near future!

Ghumakkar caught up with Rakesh during an interesting interview where Rakesh did oblige by revealing everything he could :) Here is a quick look at a snippet from their conversation.

…Ghumakkar: But you do have a flair ? No? Something tells me that you wanted to write.
Rakesh: Hehe. Frankly , I know that I could write but was not confident. The stories, the encouragement, the love which I got filled that gap. You know my ultimate dream is to write a bestseller as I am very much into reading fiction and biographies and anthologies. I dream of writing a book but often think that if it wont get published. Now as far as writing is concerned, this site has become part and parcel of life, a necessary thing, dear.

Ghumakkar: Wishes for you best seller. A lot of us Ghumakkar authors dream of getting published some day. Insha Allah. May be one day, Ghumakkar would be able to at least publish a hard bound book chronicling best stories of a place or a region or some such thing.
Rakesh: Insha Allah….

Click here to read the entire post.

Last month we discussed about the new concept on our mind “Ghumakkar Guides” .It is really satisfying to see such encouraging words from you all. Thank you for your support. The team is working on formatting the posts and it shall be out soon. I am sure it will evolve over time and with your feedback. We really want to hear from you about it as you read it since this whole concept revolves around making more and complete information available to readers like you all. Once in good form, this surely becomes a quick reference guide for the place of your choice! We will see to it that we compile the guide by using the information available on Ghumakkar and also some additional information.

As our belief goes, we will surely abide by the guidelines that we endorse and will give due credit to the authors and the source of information. We are as intolerant as you are towards plagiarism and would definitely like it if you can alert us whenever you think this is violated. Any instance of plagiarism noticed has been attended to with immediate action taken. We have had your support in the past to identify this, and we hope to see the same thing in future too.

Some factors like uniqueness is something which we appreciate and look for in posts which we publish. This not only adds essence to the posts but also helps in making the post stand out in the lot. One such post which really stood out this month was Col Mani K Gahatraj’s post – ” Trek to Sandakpu, Darjeeling”.

This is truly an inspirational post where Col Mani describes his arduous trek to Sandakpu. His vibrant description of the terrain, the flora and everything around him gets us into the scene and I must say, it is thrilling. Look through this series of 3 wonderful posts to gather all necessary information for your trip to Sandakpu. I don’t think there is anything left by Col Mani which is undescribed!
For your read, here is an extract from the series :

…The path was a combination of mule track and foot path and it was passing through varieties of jungle landscape and fauna. We passed through pine forest, then came the small structured bamboo jungle locally called “Mallebu”, then came giant sized ferns heralding the path on both sides like a natural decoration to welcome the weary traveler. As we consumed the distance and moved closer towards Gorkhey the path became steeper descent that was not very kind to my old creaking knees. The umbrella stick was a great help and support. We indulged ourselves with quick halts sipping ORS water and passing body water. We trudged along slowly and surely. ..

To read the full post, click here.

The final announcement we have for this month’s edition of the digest is to reveal who our next month’s Featured author is going to be! He is no new face in our community. He is the one who has taken us to Amarnath Yatra many times. His belief on god and his travel and of course, his style of writing is something I truly appreciate. He is none other than Naresh Sehgal! Congratulations Naresh. You are our Featured Author of the Month of August 2013. Guys. please look forward to another interesting post from Nandan where he will try to get maximum information about Naresh, his life , passions and more during the interview. The post shall be out during mid next month. Watch out for it!

As we reach this point, I am seeing the month of July fading out and August peeping through the horizon. We have had a great month through July. I am sure it will only get better in August. As I close this edition of the digest, there is a small request to make. We @ Ghumakkar strive to improve. We want your feedback . Please write to us about all that you like or dislike about our posts. We love to hear from you.

For now, that is it from me. More to come in the next edition.

Until then,

Adios!