Tag: Travel Planning Tips

How To Make Your Vacation More Meaningful

Going on vacation is a great way to make meaningful memories. It allows you to leave your comfort zone and understand other cultures. Vacationing is an exciting pastime for many, with statistics revealing that, on average, Indians take about 5 trips annually. Your vacation spot can be more than just a destination, serving as a cherished place to connect with others while living your best life. Instead of being a tourist who is simply passing through, you can become a traveller who loves to engage with the culture and community, leading to more authentic experiences and richer memories. If you are planning your next vacation, here are some ways to make it more meaningful.

Costly Blunders To Avoid When Travelling To Costa Rica

Around the world, people associate Central America with the once powerful Mayan empire, magnificent temples, and natural wonders. It is therefore not surprising that even in the year of an active pandemic, there were 1 million tourists in Costa Rica. With an area size of 51,000 square kilometers, the country is smaller than the US state of West Virginia. Indeed, it is easy to make false assumptions about this country. Unfortunately, that can be costly to a tourist. Below is a list of things to have in mind as you become a smart traveler.

4 Great Ways To Improve Your Travel Experience

It is normal for travel to feel a bit redundant when you have seen and experienced many places. Even for seasoned travelers who have seen the best tourist attraction in America and beyond, it is possible to feel a bit empty at some point. Fortunately, there are a few ways you can bring back the excitement. Consider these simple tips to make your travel more worthwhile.

The Best Tourist Attractions in America That Are Actually Worth Visiting

must have enough exciting things to see, right? With so much fantastic scenery across America, it’s easy to think every little town has its own unique sights. But with thousands of places to visit packed into a country as big as the U.S., there will be some disappointing tourist traps. Not all of these tourist attractions are worth your time, but these are some of the best. If you’re looking for somewhere special to spend your vacation time, read on for our selection of the most worthwhile sights in America.

Safety Tips for Solo Campers

Getting away from it and heading off to a national park, local mountain range or far-flung beach destination where you can spend a few nights under the stars is a great way to reset, recharge and commune with nature especially when you do it alone.

Travel Tips for the Safest and Most Successful Vacations

There’s no denying that a vacation is one of the best ways to blow off steam, relax, and enjoy some time at a destination away from your everyday life. Once you’ve made the decision to go on a vacation, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of planning and forget to consider safety. Undoubtedly, safety is one of the most important considerations for your trip. Below are the most effective travel tips to help you have a safe and successful vacation!

How To Find The Best Vacation Destinations For Your Family

You can spend hours, days even, searching for the perfect holiday destination. When you travel alone or as a couple, this is a hard enough decision. But, when you’re planning a trip with your family, the choice gets even harder. How can you find the best destination for a family holiday? What sort of things should you look for, and are there any tips to help you out?

How Stellar Data Recovery Saved My YouTube Channel Launch

My Passion for Photography

Both in my professional and personal life, traveling has played a very integral part. While traveling professionally, I have traveled the length and breadth of the country and even across the globe, from deep down rural to ultra-urban cities. And even in my personal life, I have shared some of the best moments, traveling with my family. Traveling has been a great teacher in my life and the different places and experiences have taught me a lot of aspects of life. It’s strange, how even over the years, memories of all trips remain so fresh in my mind. But I have to admit that photographs have played a big role in keeping those memories intact. Especially as a blogger, photographs became important not just as to keep memories, but also to maintain my blogging and Instagram on a regular basis. Over a period of time, these photos have become an imperative part of my life and my phone is always full of different photographs collected from different trips.

Storing Pictures

Earlier days, we used to keep our albums safely and securely locked away to ensure they don’t spoil away. But today, living in the digital world, albums have become a thing of past and its all about keeping the photos stored on digital platforms, whether it’s our phone, cloud memories or the hard drives.

But are the photos always safe, when stored digitally? No, while cloud memories are often expensive to buy, we end up storing our pictures on our phone and then maybe a back up in hard drives. But have you ever faced an issue with a hard drive? Well, I have and trust me it was devastating.

My Singapore Trip

At the beginning of the year, I visited Singapore with a friend of mine, and it was my first trip to Singapore. Also, this trip was very important to us, as we are launching women based travel channel, and this was our maiden trip for our channel. So you can very well understand the importance of this trip for us. First of all, it was an international trip and secondly, more of a business value for us than anything else. We clicked thousands of pictures because we not only had to keep our personal Instagram accounts filled with it, but also the new business venture needed those pictures. And since it was a YouTube channel that we were launching, we had over 200 videos in a 4-day trip, which were to be compiled into web series and first and foremost a launch video.

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The Panic Moment

Now imagine my plight, that when I took the hard drive to my editor, in which all our thousands of pictures and 200 videos were transferred, did not open. We checked to plug in the hard drive into different computers, but it did not read even in one. It was a moment to panic, as I realized that the hard drive had probably corrupted. All my dreams came shattering down, as I practically had no time left for my launch. I was just a fortnight away from the launch and these videos and images were so important to me. And obviously, Singapore was not a local place that I could go back and shoot again, so a chance had to be taken for data recovery. Checked with a couple of local service providers, but no one gave a guarantee of data recovery and rather scared me that the data won’t be recovered at all. I was in a total mess.

Stellar, To The Rescue

A friend of mine then told me about Stellar Data Recovery Services, she told me they were very professional and their recovery rate was very high. They provided services for all most all kinds of data recovery and they were my only recourse.
Before going to their branch, I checked and read about them online and a lot of information was available on their site itself. Their service advantages really caught my attention and I was convinced of their professionalism.

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Kinds of Services Provided

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Why Trust Stellar

They are the only ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified organization in India. Not the one who claim on papers to be ISO certified, but the ones who practice ISO guidelines inside their data recovery operations.

They are India’s first data recovery service company founded in 1993, and Stellar can proudly boast of experienced research & development team who have developed numerous data recovery software’s. This proprietary software and tools can recover data from different kind of storage devices in various conditions. So, in addition to the expected recovery of your data, they ensure your data is safe & secure within their organization. They have a success rate of 95% on data recoveries.

The best part is that their data recovery service comes with a 100% money back policy. They work on No Recovery- No charge policy*. Which means if they do not recover data specified by you, they don’t charge for it.
They even allow you to step into their lab and see the work getting done, being completely transparent about their processes. This is a Class 100 Cleanroom lab for Data Recovery, the only one of its kind in entire India.

Process

They follow a simple process for data recovery

The Stellar Strength

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To Conclude

All I can say is I was really thankful to Stellar for the video and photos recovery from my hard drive that too with a quick turn around time. In fact, I also read about preventive measures for hard drive crash on their site and know at least I can be more future ready. I was able to get my video edited and the launch did happen timely without any delays and further panic.
So remember this name whenever you face such a situation. I can easily say that there is no one better than them.

Check Out My Launch Video Here

Reasons To Consider Renting A Cabin For Your Next Vacation

Family vacations don’t come around often enough. Because of this, it is important to make the most out of the time you get. There are many lodging choices to consider. While each has its own benefits to consider, there are extra advantages that come with planning a cabin vacation such as with Beavers Bend cabin rentals. They have many great cabins to choose from on their site at www.beaversbendlogcabins.com.

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Peace And Quiet

While getting a hotel room is a go-to when planning a family vacation, there is an appeal of cabin rentals that you cannot get with staying at a hotel. One great benefit of staying out in a cabin is that you will get lots of peace and quiet. Most hotels are crammed to capacity with noisy guests and events. A cabin is set out in the woods with much less people around.

Scenery

A cabin will offer you a lot of beautiful scenery to enjoy on vacation. Depending on where you rent your cabin, you could have a view of a beautiful lake or mountains in the background. At night, the distance away from the city will allow you to see the sky and stars more clearly.

Space And Privacy

Most cabin rentals will offer more privacy and space compared to many hotel rooms. There are a variety of sizes and styles that can accommodate most families and budgets. If you are planning a huge family vacation, there are cabin rentals that can fit up to 30 or more people.

Pet Friendly

If you want to bring your family pet on vacation, the best option would be to get a cabin. If you have a dog, they will have plenty of room to run around and play without worrying about parking lots and other guests putting them in danger.

There is nothing wrong with staying in a hotel on your family vacation. However, if you want a unique and relaxing experience, a cabin rental is a great choice. You will notice how amazing it really was once you get back to the city and notice the difference.

Exploring the Fontainhas, Goa

Fontainhas is an old Latin quarter at the Altinho foothills in Panjim. It’s one place in Goa where the Portuguese influence is still very evident, so much so that this is the only place in Goa which has Portuguese as the main spoken language.

The name ‘Fontainhas’ was derived from a natural spring, Fountain of Phoenix that sprouted in 1770 and is present to date. Fontainhas was founded in the late 18th century by a wealthy Portuguese named Antonio Joao de Sequeira. He used this land for coconut plantations. But, in the early 1800s, due to the spread of epidemic in the Old Goa, the Portuguese government headquarters was shifted to Panjim. As a result, this area was transformed into the residential area for Portuguese administrative officers and rulers. In 1984, UNESCO recognized Fontainhas as a Heritage Zone.

Narrow lanes, bright and vibrant houses, small cafes, old bakeries, art galleries and every nook and corner that tells an interesting Goan story are some of the characteristics of this amazing place. Even within the hustle bustle of Panjim city, Fontainhas has maintained its serenity and quaintness. All thanks to The Local Beat Goa, I recently enjoyed a heritage walk of mixed with lots of fun and facts about the place. After grabbing a refreshing glass of watermelon juice from the Mamaramma Cafe, just next to the St. Sebastian Chapel, we started off by driving through the uphill lanes of Altinho and the Maruti Temple became our first halt.

 

Coloured in bright hues of orange, a colour that represents the monkey god ‘Hanuman’, the structure of the temple is a perfect mix of modernity and ancient heritage. As I moved in, I came to know that the temple has two idols of lord Hanuman, and even without climbing up to the main temple, one can see the bigger idol through an opening in the lower floor wall. Well I bowed down my head in front of both, the main idol which is housed in a big hall looks majestic.

The prayer hall is huge and a big chandelier in the centre makes it look magnificent. There is a lot of open space around the main temple and the view from the top is breathtakingly beautiful. You can practically see the entire Fontainhas area from there and especially the spring.

We climbed down the stairs that lead to the Fontainhas spring. It is believed that there was a tunnel from the temple till that spring, which now stands closed, and the door was sealed with a cross. The two structures that line around the spring used to provide light in that tunnel, are mosque like structures and hence this place becomes a wonderful amalgamation of 3 religions.

From there on we strolled through the lanes of Fontainhas, visiting a few art galleries, which house some of the best art that leave you awestruck. Its so interesting to see these old world charm buildings, you know the windows in some of the old houses use shells in place of glasses, as glass wasn’t available back then. And trust me they look so amazing that given a chance I would want my windows to be made of sea shells.

We also visited one of the oldest bakery, named Confeitaria 31 De Janeiro, it still uses the old stone clay oven and bakes some amazing stuff. I tried the french rolls and it really took me back in time, normally don’t get that kind of taste anymore. They were so fresh and delicious. The name 31 De Janeiro holds a significance in history, Rua 31 de Janeira (31st January Road) is named after the day when Portugal got independence from Spain on January 31, 1640

From a light drizzle to thunder shower, monsoons made the walk even more interesting and beautiful. I also learnt that the houses in Fontainhas still need to get painted after every monsoon, it was a rule laid out in the Portuguese time but is followed till date. This keeps the beauty and vibrancy of this place in tact year after year. One of the historic houses that I came across had big well in front of it, though the well is not in function now, but the serenity and peace of the place is inexplainable. You can really spend some quiet time there breathing the natural and man made beauties together.

Another place where you can sit back, relax and enjoy some great coffee and snacks is the Bombay Coffee Roasters. The front wall of this cafe is quite a popular one with photographers. The mosaic is really worth a look and the place offers calm and comfortable interiors, has wi-fi and is ideal to spend some quality time alone and get some creative work done, or simply chill out with friends.

Talking about mosaic, its not just about the wall of Bombay Coffee Roasters, but this tile art is one of the most significant characteristics of Goa and especially the Fontainhas. Azulejo is the Portuguese name for these beautifully hand painted ceramic tiles. This art originated in the 15th century and travelled to India when the Portuguese settled in Goa. Though back then these Azulejos were imported from Portugal, and there were no Goan artists to do it, the art from literally died. It was brought back by a man named Orlando De Norohna, who had a 5 year degree in commercial art from Goa college of arts. He went to Lisbon to get himself skilled with guitar and came back with Azulejos. Since then the art has been fully revived and many students took interest in learning the same. Today Goa is the only state in India where these tiles are made. Take a walk around Goa and you will see these Azulejos as a part of its landscape. From name tiles to murals, each Azulejo tells a Goan story. Azulejos De Goa in Panjim, is one of the best shops to hunt for these stunning hand crafted tiles.

Moving on, we came to one of the major landmarks of this old quarter of Goa, the St Sebastian Chapel. It was also the point from where we started and the point where we concluded our lovely heritage walk. The Chapel of St Sebastian is a popular tourist attraction in Goa, built in 1818. This chapel is dedicated to St. Sebastian.In earlier days, when people were troubled with the disease of pests and plagues, they turned for help to St Sebastian who treated them through his mediation and miraculous interventions.

This whitewashed church has a striking crucifix which originally stood in the Palace of Inquisition in Old Goa. In the crucifix Christ’s eyes are opened. It’s a rather unusual sight to witness a crucifix with Christ’s head up and eyes open, it’s believed to be so in order to instil fear of god. The god is watching those who are troublemakers and they shall be punished for their sins. The Chapel also houses a statue of the Virgin Mary, two marquetry chests and three elaborately carved screens from a church in Diu, which once formed part of the colony of Goa.

This heritage walk of Fontainhas filled me with so much information and beauty, that the memories will last a lifetime. All I could do is capture it in my camera in order to cherish and relive these moments again and again. This is one thing that you should definitely not miss when in Goa