Footprints on the Mountainside

I write and write, and imagine people reading my blog, clicking through to something else, reading that. Nameless faceless creatures in the dark known to no one, except server logs.

The only thing I guess I know about you, is that you are probably interested in the outdoors, considering that you are here.

Could you take a moment and drop me a line about yourself and your interests? I’d like to know more about you.

I just love how the net connects people. I was spending some time reading around, and headed across to Mridula’s blog - Travel Tales from India. Most of her recent posts are about Nainital.

Honestly, I hadn’t given much of a thought to Nainital, as to many mountaineers, “hill stations” are like the plague, unless they are access points to outstanding trekking routes or peaks. I’d been to Nainital, pretty much like I go to a railway station. But when I looked at the blog, I felt so connected, that I felt a sharp pang of regret, that my snobbish attitude had blinded me to the beauty of the “regular haunts”. There is a reason Nainital is a well loved hill station, and in my thirst for adventure, I had missed it entirely. Speaking of not bothering to stand and stare!

Then of course, I was in a Nainital mood, and found another blog - this time by Lokesh Shah and had my fill of looking at Nainital pictures. He has some really nice pictures, and the whole feel of it is one of familiar fondness.

Now I’m off to see what else I can find. I have two hours before heading off for a climbing session at Kanheri, and I plan to put them to good use.

Just coming back from a successful training programme. This one was for a bunch of new recruits in an upcoming software company. This was one of the most bizarre programmes I ever conducted, yet, it was satisfying in a very meaningful way.

The participants were fresh from college, and had a lot of ideals, but very little idea of what working is all about. Chaos ruled, and initially, it took some time to get them to believe that outbound training programmes are not office picnics or perks, but the company actually expected them to be learning something out here.

There was a time when I was willing to write the programme off as a disaster.

We took off in fits and starts. Somewhere down the line, the whole thing clicked in place, when we were discussing happenings in an activity that required a lot of perseverance and their
performance was a dismal failure. Something happened in that group. All of a sudden, there was an awareness that here was something important going on.

The tempo picked, and at the end of the three days, I can say that this was one of the programmes where we were able to acheive a lot of constructive change among the participants. It is probably not even close to some of the outstanding programmes if discipline and performance in activities is to be considered, but if we see the magnitude of change we went through, this one has me thoroughly humbled.

Shows that even trainers have a lot to learn from their own experiences.

Ah, what do I say, the growth pangs of a young company are torture indeed. I’m in the process of negotiating a deal for outbound soft skills training for a BPO. Money is a crunch, and they want the world as always, but what’s more annoying is that they want really safe “high
adventures”.

In the clients words, “Most of us have never been in the outdoors, so we want to experience something really dangerous and spectacular” and in the same breath, “it shouldn’t be too scary”.

I think they want to have some kind of a good time in the outdoors, but as usual, the focus is on the adventure rather than the learning.

That’s fine. I guess I’ll just need to show them some fancy pictures
and some explanations on actual and perceived risk.

Let’s see how it goes.

This is a paid review, but I have been looking at sites with cheap air ticket offers for quite some time, and I found the rates here quite interesting.

Cheapoair Top 25 Deals  is the site I am speaking about this time. On the whole, it looks like any other flight booking site. The rates are reasonable and the database works fast enough that you don’t site around twiddling your thumbs waiting for something to turn up, like it happens on so many travel booking sites. And there are handy links on top for group and corporate travel, so that you don’t have to hunt around wondering what happens in those cases. So that is a plus. Worth bookmarking for the next time you need to book tickets, though I would recommend comparing sites and deciding for yourself.

What I also liked, were the handy links to travel resources, hotel bookings, car hire and other needs related with travelling. So on the whole, it could be a one stop shop for planning your trip.

The wicked temptation in the site is the vacations they have. Well presented and tempting pictures. The problem being in chosing which of all the places ot go, so a definitely dangerous site for your wallet, if you’re susceptible to temptation.

On the minus side, this site is geared specifically for Americans, with local destinations, international travel and stuff being from that perspective. So, for the regular readers here, out of which only about 20% are Americans, this is a shift of perspective. Local means different to different people depending on their location, and it feels alien for a non-American.

I would definitely have felt more comfortable with the “Domestic” being America, so that I don’t have to figure out where exactly domestic is.

On the whole, a nice, convenient travel bookings site, with speed of use and access and a good variety of information available, even if it is nothing exceptional and seems to be meant only for Americans. I think they could reach out better to travelers from all over the world with that simple change.