All of us want to travel and most of us want to share our travel stories with friends and family. The stories happen over dinner table, over morning cup of tea or even during the commute to office. Those beautiful sights on our last trip to Himalayas or the fun we had at Goa are always waiting to be unfolded on the first opportunity we get and the satisfaction which comes in the form of oohs, and aahs make our day. After all, we live for each other and happy experience are meant to spread further and farther.
At Ghumakkar, we try hard to make the whole process easier and while we try our best to provide you an easy way to keyboard them, its never easy enough. Looking at an unfinished story amid drafts by a fellow author is not at all a rare sight and that is what prompted us to think hard on what can we do more. Most often, its the pictures but then there are a ton of other things like putting the right categories, marking the destination on the map, inserting the “more” tag, writing your bio and the list goes on. All of this is what we call as the ‘necessary tax’ and this allows your story to look best, categories allow visitors to find your story in a structured way and the map-location tells them easily on where that place is.
Without any further ado, let me come to the point. At Ghumakkar, what we ask you is just a simple email having the story and our editors would do the rest for you. This helps you to entirely focus on what you do best, that is weave your magical travel experiences and leave all the housekeeping to us.
This has been in operation for a while but we thought that we would write a small step-by-step tutorial so that the story goes on production as quickly as possible.
Here is what you need to do
1. Write your story in a notepad or MS word or any editor. Notepad works best.
2. Pick your photos, we prefer less than 10 but you decide and then resize them to 640 X 480. You can refer following instructions to resize them.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/tips/eschelman2.mspx
If doing above mean too much hassle, then just skip this step. We would resize your big pictures.
3. Now number your photos as 1.jpg, 2.jpg and so on.
4. Go back to your story which you have written in notepad and then put markers like 1.jpg, 2.jpg to the places where you would want these photos to be. After the number, please write a small caption for each photo.
Example –
We went to Goa and what fun we had …………
1.jpg
caption – xyz Beach
5. And finally send the notepad and the jpg files to either at info@ghumakkar.com or at vibha@ghumakkar.com
One of us would promptly get back to you as you story gets done. Simple.
My Trip to Dominican Republic.
Spring has just arrived in Canada on the 21st march again. It was much cooler than last year or the year before, as we had a long winter with shoveling snows, scraping windows of the car using studded tires for driving etc. However most of the snow birds were returning home after spending the winter in the sunny south(USA).
My brother from Edmonton Alberta called me and asked me if I was interested to take a vacation for 8 days to the Carrebean as they have booked their all inclusive resort in Punta Cana (Dominican republic). I decided to tag along with them as I have never been to the Dominican. My flight was from Halifax Nova Scotia by Transat Airbus with 250 some passengers, and all of them from Nova Scotia. I met some people at the airport who were originally from my own town (Truro). My destination was Gran Bahia principe, Amber resort (A 5* resort). Unfortunately none of the passengers from my flight was going to Amber. Upon arrival after a short flight of 4.5 hours, we arrived at the Punta Cana Airport at.9.30 pm local time.
The Transat tour bus was waiting for all the passengers to be transferred to their destinations. My bus took me to Bavaro , where I was transferred to a shuttle service with my luggage to Amber resort. Upon arrival, we were welcomed to a meeting hall and informed of our resorts formalities and the daily tours that they offer for small fees. The passengers were escorted to their suits( I had a junior suite) The suite was well furnished to the standards with a fride, bar (all stocked up) snacks, a coffee maker and plenty of coffee grinds and tea bags,
etc. with all the other amenities that was expected.
I arrived in my suite after meeting my brother and wife for a short time at the lobby, around 11.45 pm. The restaurants were closed for the night, I could only order room service. Though I had a hot meal in the flight, I was kind of hungry and ordered a cheese sandwich, which was delivered within 15 minutes.We decided to meet for breakfast on the 29th march at the Buffet restaurant at the resort around 8.30 am. This buffet reminded me of spending a week in Agatti Island during my vacation to India in 2005. The Buffet was wonderful with tropical fruits and vegitables such as mango, pineapple, guava,plantern, bananas along with strawberries, peaches, pears, oranges, apples etc.. etc..
We had a chance to go to an Alacarte restaurant (Don Pablo Restaurant), just about 3 blocks from my residence.
To get a reservation for that fabulous restaurant, you need to book two days in advance, which I did. We enjoyed a fabulour treat there with filet mignon and all the trimmings with lobster, and red wine.
The local money is Peso and we never carried any Peso at all as we tipped every where with American dollars. A dollar is worth about 37 pesos and giving a $5.00 tip was some thing like a half a day wages for many. For us, a $5.00 tip is like going to a coffee shop and have a coffee and a sandwich and leaving a tip of $2.00 to $5.00 depending on the place.
On April 1st/2011, we decided to go for an Island tour. Our destination was Saona Island. It was about a little over 2 hour bus ride and about an hour by speed boat and a catamaran. We left our Ambar resort at 6.30 am by a shuttle service to Bavaro resort, where we were picked up by the tour bus enroute to Saona Island. What a fabulous Island!!!! It reminded us about coastal kerala.
The tour bus was guided by a lady by name Crystal, a netherlander who settled down in bavaro, Punta Cana 17 years ago, who speaks very fluently in English, French and Spanish. The language in the Dominican is Spanish and most of the people speak a very little English.
At the Saona Island, we had a barbecue buffet with, beef, chicken, fish and all thre trimmings. Local beer was served along with wine of your choice. remember, all the meals are included for the price of $99.00 per person for this trip. What a treat !!!
There was a professional photographer on board to take the video of our trip, and the videos were offered to the tourists for $40.25 each. The photographer took videos for over 3 hours of our trip and surely thought there would be a 90 minute video for the price of $40.25.
we have ordered the videos, but it was not to our expectations. The video was just 27 minutes and of that 7 minutes were silent, 5 minutes focussed on a person who was dancing at the catamaran trip, and the rest about the swimming in the occean and showing a starfish that was picked up by one of the swimmers and the catamaran transfer.
A Carebean trip for any one will be memorable. My next adventure will be jamaica…Have a happy Easter holidays…