Footprints on the Mountainside

I am often asked and even criticized for being over friendly with clients. Which service provider explains components of a potential invoice and easy ways of doing parts of it themselves with little effort?

A case in point being corporate programme proposals having potential location contacts and a suggestion that a direct negotiation might work out cheaper.

Or adventure sport clients who are basically enthusiastic youth on the look out for tips getting as many tips as they want, contacts and advice to organize their trips themselves and so on?

The way I see it, my purpose is in my skill in the services I provide. I am doing no miracles, but I do what I do exceedingly well. It does me no harm and gains a lot of good will if my client saves some money on the buffers on hotel charges, or if a group of people manage their own tour.

There are clients who don’t want the hassle and will still pay me to do it, and there are people who go away with information so reliable and unique that the next time they go out, they budget to be able to pay me.

Within a few years of the creation of this site, I have over a thousand people subscribing to a newsletter that goes out maybe 4 times a year and stays shut if there is nothing extraordinary to say.

I see this as a strength which, like the open source softwares, is transparent. I have clients suggesting that I start offering some kind of tour, or recommending me to others. Like the open source softwares, it may be silly to offer this kind of information for free, but it brings me great goodwill and I get to be appreciated and hired for the things only I can do.

Seems unprofessional? I see it as warmth and true commitment to my clients needs.

Its monsoon time again, and the world is a rich green. While we conduct rafting trips all through the year, monsoon is a special time, because the river is really full of water. We no longer are slaves to the dam that releases the water for our precious white water.

The season is good this year. The field staff have got in another raft to deal with the work load, and trips are running full. Bookings actually need to be done two weeks in advance to have any guarantee of getting a place on the raft. And all this, in spite of having enough water on the river to allow an additional late morning run as well as the usual early morning one with the dam water.

Not bad. Raka and I are in a good mood these days. We’re planning to join a group from JP Morgan who have booked with us this Sunday, and hope that this is going to be a time for us to get away from the city and feel truly like being in the outdoors for fun again.

Who knows, there’s a group from the same company on Saturday as well, and we just might make an overnight trip out of this. Monsoon is certainly not a time to be sitting in the city.

I’ll see if I can get some fun pics out of this.