Nandan Jha

Vibha in a conversation with Patrick Jasper.

Section 1 – About Patrick

[Vibha] We know you by two names “The Other Patrick” and “Patrick Jasper.” Tell us more about the person behind these names.
[Patrick Jasper] Ha Ha. Yes, thats right. When I started writing and more specifically commenting on stories at Ghumakkar, I would sign them off by saying ‘The Other Patrick’, because Patrick Jones was already there and it would have been confusing to have two Patricks. .

Talking about the real Patrick, I am a Tamilian who belongs to Kanyakumari and have stayed most of my life there. I am a banker by profession and that is my trigger for being at various places. I am currently at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh and before that I worked at Mumbai, Maharashtra. My banking profession gives me opportunities to be at various places and I could not have asked for more.
I am married and my 6 year old son, Jonathan, keeps me on my toes for travel and everything else. That is what ‘the other Patrick’ is all about.

[Vibha] You have been traveling for quite some time now. When did it become more than a hobby for you?
[Patrick Jasper] I think I got introduced to travel during my college days. Every couple of months, we would take off and go for a mini trek. I believe the change-over from casual traveling to serious traveling happened after I purchased my car, a fiat Palio. That gave me enough mobility to explore and to be more independent and I utilized every bit of that new found independence.

[Vibha] Recently you completed a trek to Sar-pass. How did you motivate yourself to come out of an urban lifestyle and move into this kind of strenuous stuff?
[Patrick Jasper] I would give the credit to my college days for this. As I was telling you that we used to do these short duration treks, mostly 2 to 3 days, or hikes. I was an active member of ‘College Trekking Club’ and we would do these in the areas of Kodaikanal, Mysore etc.
After college, I got into a job and then later got married and my parenthood kept me away from these sojourns, but that desire was quietly sitting there.
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I started driving long distances after Oct 2001, when I bought my first car, a Maruti WagonR. Before that I have been a co-passenger, and my city driving was mostly on my 100 CC Bajaj Caliber. My drives were mostly around 250-300 Km radius in initial years. In Feb 2004, we bought a Mahindra Scorpio and over time our long distance drives have gradually increased to 500+ KMs a day. The longest single day drive for me, so far, has been from Delhi to Jaisalmer , and Delhi to Allahabad.

Its Aug 2010 now and a lot has changed in last 8-9 years. The changes are for better and what appeared like a real long drive in 2002 now looks like a morning drive to a lot of us. Drive from Delhi to Agra is not considered as a long drive and we all aspire to do Delhi-Manali or Bangalore-Mumbai in one day. We have better roads, improved infrastructure of supporting services like telecom, power and most importantly self driving is beginning to become a preferred mode of transport, at least for short family vacations.

So in light of all that, I thought that I would write a small tip-list based out of my personal experiences. A lot of it is standard stuff and you would know them by heart , e.g. check tyre pressure but I am hoping that some of these are new to you and are helpful.

The tips are not in a order, and I have not taken a lot of time thinking/planning so this is mostly from what I could remember.

Let me divide the tips in three sections.
A. Before the drive
B. During the drive
C. After the drive
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My wife had to do a recci for a press conference so I tugged along. It was to be ‘Pataudi Palace’. Let me give you some more information about the palace before we actually go there.

Nawab of Pataudi, Iftikhar Ali Khan got it built around 1935 and it is designed by Austrian architect Karl Molt Von Heinz. It has a very imperial kind of look, all white, tall walls (very unlike fort-ish). Home to Mansur Ali Khan Patuadi (more popularly known as Tiger), Sharmila Tagore and later Saif and Soha. Now its a hotel run by Neemrana Group and you can have this place for yourself without burning your pockets. Here’s the link of the Neermana.

Location
Not too far from Delhi, about 60 KMs from Connaught Place, Delhi. The directions are simple, just hop on to NH8 (Delhi – Jaipur road), drive till ‘Bilaspur’. Just before Bilaspur, you would notice a lot of constructions going on, my guess is that KMP (Kundli Manesar Plawal) is cutting NH8 on its way to NH 2. Right at Bilaspur, take a right turn and drive down for about 9 Kilometers.

Here’s Google Map.

View Larger Map
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When you write a new story at Ghumakkar, it greatly helps to associate all the right and relevant categories. The question is that how does one figure out the right-and-relevant ones. More so, when you are a new author and still finding your way around on how to upload pics, how to add more tag and so on.

Here’s an attempt to explain the category structure which we use at Ghumakkar and we are hoping that this might make your job a little easier.

Categories at Ghumakkar follow a hierarchy, so there are top-level categories, then there are sub-categories and then there are sub-sub-categories. For example, there is a category called “StatesOfIndia”, which has a subcategory called “Rajasthan” and then at a lower level we have “Ajmer” or “Jaipur” or something else.

StatesOfIndia -> Rajasthan -> Ajmer

So, as a first step, lets see what are the top level categories. These are

- International
- StatesOfIndia
- Theme
- Hotel

At a 2nd level the sub-categories are
- International -> Asia
- International -> Europe
- International -> North Americas
- International -> South America
- International -> Africa
- International -> Australia

If you go down one level down, you would find
- International -> Europe -> Italy
- International -> Europe -> United Kingdom
- International -> Europe -> Holland
- International -> Europe -> Germany

and so on.

Same is the structure within ‘StatesOfIndia’. You would have observed that for India, we are at a much granular level. For example
StatesOfIndia -> Karnataka -> Bengaluru

Whereas for International, we are only at country level. Thats because we get a lot of domestic stories. It might change in future but as of now, for International , granularity till ‘Country’ level is sufficing.
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The new satellite townships of Delhi are not known for planning real large/huge city-parks. Most of the energy is gone towards planning the residential apartments, commercial complexes and then whatever little space is left, small parks get thrown in. There is one right in front of my house but its not really a city park, something which is usually very big and have different areas for walking, playing, recreation etc. So when we came to know about Swarna Jayanti Park, we decided to make a visit.

Location – Here’s google map. Its interactive and you can open it in a new window and search a way from your home/office.

View Swarna Jayanti Park in a larger map

The one called ‘GDA Park’ in the map is the one I mentioned above as something which is right next to my house.
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