Finding the right words by Amrita Das

[Amrita Das a travel blogger and a freelance travel writer. She quit her corporate job to travel and explore the world. She moves to any place that allows her to travel and explore the off-beat path, volunteers to understand the various ways of sustainable living, and loves outdoor adventure. She travels solo to meet strangers as friends.

She has travelled across twenty states in India and has briefly explored Nepal, Switzerland, Italy and Paris. She aims to "get as many stamps on my passport because life is too short and there are too many stories to hear!"

Hear what she has to say about the many vectors of search a traveler has to face, and how finding the right search engine is as important as enjoying your vacation itself!]

Planning the next travel is a big decision. Even a bigger one than ‘do you want to mortgage a house?’ Well, at least for me.

Once I have booked my transport to and from the place, my next step is usually to select an accommodation. Depending on what I will be doing in the destination, I prioritise my accommodation. For instance travelling to Coorg was synonymous to staying in a rainforest and here my place of stay had become a crucial part of my search. However, when looking at something Goa, I am more open to options. My search, hence, depends more on my focus on the activity.

And even though search engines like Google are great in showing up the best results, I suppose I have to be quite specific with my keywords. If I am looking at ‘restaurants in Panjim’, I must type those. As a traveller, it may work better for me if my search engine shows up customised searches by itself. With a variety of essential and basic keywords to choose from, planning and researching over a destination becomes more focussed and easier.

Take for example my recent visit to Darjeeling where I was solely researching on the Sandakphu Trek. I intended to do the trek all by myself and spent unnecessary hours examining through millions of words on cyberspace to check if this could be possible. Finding information such as ‘solo friendly’ or ‘travel alone’ should be viable options in today’s day and age. After all, travelling solo is a quick trend that’s catching up the travel industry already. Nonetheless, specific keywords like adventure, trek or geographic locations like Darjeeling, NorthEast India; only help minimise time and effort while putting together a good suitable travel plan.

As explorers, we’d rather be lost on unknown turns of physical space than feel hapless amidst unknown words of cyberspace.

Wildlife Photography: Chat with Anuroop Krishnan

[Anuroop Krishnan is a marketer by profession, who grew up in Bangalore and is currently based out of Gurgaon. He has traveled extensively across the country and has experienced wildlife through photography. He loves to document the not so well known forms of life, which exist in the same places as we do; or in the same places we travel to. He tries to depict subjects in their natural surroundings, in an endeavor to build the significance of habitats and their conservation among people who view his images.

Anuroop has been photographing wildlife for over eight years now. His photograph of the Chinkara (Indian Gazelle) was recently published on the cover of the Sanctuary Asia Cub magazine. An earlier image of a tigress was published on the back cover of the same magazine. He has also been featured in the Better Photography magazine’s expert panel, and has shared his views on wildlife photography.]

Imagine waking up to birds chirping, a stream gurgling and a thick cover of green enveloping you in its sweet embrace. If this scene intrigues you, then a wildlife reserve getaway is exactly what you need. While you're there, it is only natural that you want to capture this unending beauty on your camera lens, so that you can revisit this slice of heaven when city life wears you down the next time.

FMC is right here to help, read on as we chat with wildlife photographer Anuroop Krishnan as he shares insights into nature and photography. Appreciating natural history is the key to enjoying your visit to a wildlife reserve as well as capturing images to last a lifetime.

[FMC]: What are the national parks you have been to?
[Anuroop]: India wildlife reserves offers a wide range of experiences throughout the year. Winter is a great time for birds since it brings with it the large number of migratory visitors. The monsoons are a good time for amphibians and reptiles, and the summers are when you queue up to see the big cats. Some of the well-known parks in India which I love to visit are Corbett, Bharatpur, Tadoba, Gir, Rann of Kutch and Kabini. That apart, I love going to some of the place that aren’t very well known  such as Tal Chapar in Rajasthan, Agumbe in Karnataka and Rollapadu in AP.

[FMC]: Can you provide a glimpse into what treasures await us at these parks?
[Anuroop]:

• While Corbett is well known for its tigers, it is also one of the best places in India to photograph elephants which congregate at the Dhikala grassland in summer.
• Bharatpur is well known for its birds.
• Tadoba is well known for its tigers.
• Gir is the only place in the world for the Asiatic lion.
• Rann of Kutch has a variety of desert life such as the foxes, cats, the Indian wild ass, hyenas and a large number of birds.
• Kabini is well known for its leopards, and a boat ride in summer is a must to see large elephant congregations, otters and birds.

[FMC]: To be responsible travelers, what dos and don'ts should we follow when we visit these parks?
[Anuroop]: Firstly we need to understand and respect the fact that nature operates at its own will and pace. The fact that we have taken time off to visit a nature reserve means nothing to a tiger or an elephant in the reserve. We need to understand that us going to a place does not assure us of a sighting of what we want to see. That being said, there is always something on offer - birds, butterflies, a large number of amphibians and reptiles. While we head to a park to see a tiger or a leopard, we must also appreciate everything else that is on offer.

Secondly, we need to behave in a way that does not startle or scare animals. While in the park we must not make noise. We must also not leave behind anything more than our footsteps. We must allow the animals the space they need to  carry on with their lives, and be silent spectators.

[FMC]: To be responsible photographers, what dos and don'ts should we follow when we visit these reserves?
[Anuroop]: Lately, there seems to be a growing notion that photography in general is harmful to wildlife. The fact that a large number of photographers are worried about getting the shot alone, with a complete disregard for the animal they are shooting, has led to this belief. I think it is important to keep in mind that as photographers we are intruding into an animal's world, and therefore, we must give it the time and distance in needs to grow its tolerance towards us. A lot of times we try to go in too close too quickly, and end up stressing animals; which is why understanding all that you can about the animal you are shooting becomes important. Each species and every individual has its own  level of tolerance towards people.

[FMC]: What’s next on your agenda? Why?
[Anuroop]: I am headed to Valparai, near Coimbatore in October hoping to see the Lion-tailed macaques. This highly endangered species is endemic to the Western Ghats, and Valparai is one of the places where they are seen often.

Anuroop's recent achievements:
●        Photographer of the Year in the Macro category, (organized by the Better Photography Magazine) in 2012 for the Photographer of the Year title, travelled to Kenya for the final face-off round.
●        Finishing in top 50 in the Pixel Perfect competition by Saevus in 2013
●        Winner of Wildclicks in 2012, a live photography contest

Click HERE for Anuroop's website.
Follow Anuroop on Facebook HERE.

Darr ke aage, jeet hai

Translated verbatim, the title means Beyond fear, lies success.

When we started conceptualizing and working on FindMyCarrots, getting things to work in India for Indian locations was more than a pipe dream. We started off with the success of one query here, a second there. In between, were umpteen grimaces. I remember a few occasions, when one of us had passed out on our laptop thinking why a query failed, woke up with splitting headache and attributed the cause of the headache to wrong understanding of a query by the FmC engine running inside us.
When we started working on the US launch a month back and gave ourselves a couple months to complete, we were apprehensive, again. We were scared to try getting US online in such a short time.

But deep inside, we believed we had the building blocks to achieve it. So, when we started aiming for the 2 month period, and achieved significant success in the first week itself, we became bold. We started to look at what lay ahead of the fear - support of US information on FmC, something that could have only been referred to as fantasy when we started. This is what is so interesting in building FmC 1 small piece at a time. It takes you over, completely, to the point of becoming the cause for your physical pain in your mind. But beyond that pain lies ecstasy and beyond that, perhaps, success!!

Butterflies in our stomach...

It has been a long drawn week - the last one, as well. We have been trying to get everything in place for the forthcoming US launch. Testing and finding issues were, at times, getting under our skin. Getting fixes ready, telling the world that we will be serving information about places of interest in the USA is just the tip of the iceberg. There are umpteen other stuff that I cannot recollect that has been going on. All to make sure everything goes well as per plan. When you are at the eye of the storm, all seems peaceful, life moves in super slowmo and you tend to feel that sense of calm, because all that you can look at when you lift the head is more things to do.

Now that we are almost ready and are cleaning up after what was madness, the madness is starting to take hold of us. The uncertainty of what will happen when US destinations become available on FmC, is killing. It is like the night before your kid goes out to school for the first time. You are thrilled at the fact that she has grown up to go to school. But at the same time, there are umpteen things going through your mind that can go wrong. You run over everything that was to be done one last time every few minutes and still cannot get those butterflies out of your stomach.

This is the feeling that you look back to, fondly, when you are way past this stage. These are the small things that make this journey what it is - Enthralling. I hope you like the US carrots we bring to you, as much as we like bringing them.

The grass greener on the other side?..of the pond

A few days back, we made it public to whoever cared to listen, that we have set our sights on crossing the pond. Almost everyone wished us luck. A few expressed astonishment at what seemed audacious to them. Some of them put words to the question in their mind. Are we done with India? Why such a hurry to get to the USA? I believe we owe an answer to all of you.

We are NOT done creating information in India. On the contrary, we have begun a phase where the information creation graph in India is going to hit a plateau. There will be painstaking and time consuming machine training phases where, we will have to spend significant effort and will be able to show small, incremental but fine grained progress. But the learning that we have had so far in creating information out of data in India is now ready to be replicated. We want the machines to help create information in the USA while we spend time training it further up in India.  Hence, we have kicked off the information build up on the greener side of the pond. All that we do every hour we are awake counts for nothing if it is of no use to you, our beloved users. Hence, we have decided to bring FmC to USA to hear and learn from you, feed the learning back into FmC, so, our quest of a little learning every day makes us the automatic option when you want to Dream, Search and Experience your next vacation.

In search of liquid propulsion...

   We attend a few fun(d) raising events to pitch to Angels and early stage VCs, looking for liquid propulsion for our intergalactic launch. Most mortals refer to that as money. Guess what is the most popular rebut to FmC, from the money bags? Big daddies of travel with deep pockets will throw money and solve this problem in a few days and you will be left looking like the idiots that you already are. While we completely agree, that we are utter idiots, we tend to come back and sew together whatever is left of our tattered self-esteem and confidence with this 1 thread.

    There has been no dearth of money in online travel. There has been consistent research reports and opinions from the online travel industry leaders that this is precisely the problem to solve. Hell, some of the big daddies of investment have invested sizeable money into pumping out information from the depths of travel data through some well known startups, both in India and abroad. So, if we have not seen any movement after quite a few years of engine revving, FmC, perhaps, fails to reflect how big an idiot, we are. Perhaps we make this pipe-dream look so real and achievable, it seems money can be thrown to solve it in a few days!! 

There in lies our success, till we succeed in making that intergalactic trip on the spaceship named FmC.

Our Humpty-Dumpty days

Everyday, as we try and build up FmC, we are trying to scale a wall. The wall of our mind where we set limitations on ourselves - about what we can achieve. So, everyday we try to climb this wall, we sit on it for long, staring at what lies on the other side, tentatively, thinking if we can take a plunge. But as you might be expecting, more often than not, we have a great fall in this endeavor and, boy, does it hurt!

The sad part is, no horses or men from the King's cavalry come over to lift us up. Forget that, to add insult to injury, the naysayers and the enlightened of the world heap scorn explaining how stupid we must be to try such improbabilities. After all, who will want to use FmC when the Advisors and the Makers have Clearly won over the Yatra ecosystem of the travelers. But then, when you start digging the earth to mine, you are not expecting results before you started digging. Mining for Carrots is tough and we knew it from the moment we enlisted to go underground for your carrots. Therefore, the self conviction does not erode. The taste of dust in our mouth, we help each other up in the team, shouting out a curse here an expletive there, to give vent to our fury at not having succeeded, but doubling our resolution that the next leap will not be far off and success is just on the other side of the wall...

Proud to be Humpty Dumpty for 30 days of the month. Because we live for the 31st day of the next month, when the naysayers will hide their head in the sand. Let us change the rhyme to:

Humpty Dumpty got up from the fall.. 

Humpty Dumpty scaled the HUGE wall..