Lonlely Planet is giving out Travel Blogger Awards this year in ten categories. I saw the news and thought, let’s pitch some Indian blogs, which have all the required qualities but usually don’t get there simply because we would not know of the award program. I walked through my feed reader, picked a bunch of travel blogs and have nominated for the award.
The procedure involves initial round of nominations by public(which will not be disclosed), and then 5 blogs in each category with top nominations will be opened for public voting. Let’s all work to nominate a few Indian Blogs, so we will have some of them in the final list.
I have made many nominations, and of all of them, strongly feel that clay, an excellent compilation of travel information and stories by various authors, managed by Lakshmi and Arun deserves to be there on the top.
Go here and submit your nominations now and spread the word yourself.
Also see: Best Travel Blogs nominations for 2008 weblog awards.
A little cormorant on a branch over Phookot Lake, Wayanad, Kerala
Author: Jon Krakauer
Publishers: Anchor Books
Pages: 333
From the very beginning of the book, Jon Krakauer creates an impression that this is a book that keeps the reader hooked. At the end of the first chapter, it becomes hard to put the book down until it is read completely.
Krakauer is part of a 1996 expedition that is attempting to summit Mt.Everest. Even though the going is not smooth and people face hardships and struggle at the high altitude, nothing remarkable happens until the team summits and starts their descent back to the camp. A storm strikes them on the way back. At the end of an agonizing night in unbearable cold, strong winds, and little oxygen, it leaves many people dead and the others weak and shaken.
Krakauer tries to log the events that happened after the storm struck, desperate struggle of those who got caught in the storm and rescue attempts by those who were in safety, and the events leading up to and after the incident. Besides the story of devastation from the storm, the book also logs the entire Everest journey, how it begins and progresses, the kind of effort that goes into the climb and the impression that the mountain leaves on the people.
Besides being an adventure book that narrates the struggle for survival in the harsh environs, it is also a detailed log of methodical approach used by teams to climb Everest, the ecology, local people, and economics involved in climbing expeditions. An excellent read.