Oslo conference as it was covered by the travelmole.tv. Click on the image for the above video. The Blue Yonder is featured towards the end of the video.
Bangalore © GP 2007
Bangalore © GP 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Rob's exhibition in London
Rob is exhibiting his paintings and drawings at the Art Academy Gallery in London from 22nd May till 06th of June 2007. Shame I missed it this time. Congratulations Rob
Bangalore © GP 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Photo updates from Oslo
From Helsinki to Delhi it took around 6 hours by flight and from the international airport in New Delhi to the domestic airport it took almost half of that time in a crappy bus! After travelling around, promoting a destination, talking about how wonderful it is, the infrastructure reality hits you on the face once you land back in your country.!
Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, buses that need a ladder to climb on, those with no baggage racks or spaces and long interviews on where you are coming from and what you going to do here..It never ends.
Now, here are some of the pictures from Oslo. Some other pictures have been uploaded into the previous blogs as well.
Graduates celebrating the National day in Oslo on the 17th May
A Norwegian artists' interpretation of Monalisa in a Tapa's bar in Oslo
Linda, Simon, Christy, Holly and Chris
As tall as the traffic lights!
Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, buses that need a ladder to climb on, those with no baggage racks or spaces and long interviews on where you are coming from and what you going to do here..It never ends.
Now, here are some of the pictures from Oslo. Some other pictures have been uploaded into the previous blogs as well.
Graduates celebrating the National day in Oslo on the 17th May
A Norwegian artists' interpretation of Monalisa in a Tapa's bar in Oslo
Linda, Simon, Christy, Holly and Chris
As tall as the traffic lights!
Bangalore © GP 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Adieu Oslo
Until the Oslo conference, "Saami's" for me was all about reindeers and the legends of Santa Claus. In the conference schedule there was rather a surprise. In the opening plenary session, one of the key note speaker mentioned was "Aili Keskitalo, President, Sámediggi (The Sámi Parliament) ". On the last day, there was also a presentation by Mr. Lennart Pittja, who is the founder and owner of Pathfinder Lapland on "Saami eco tourism in Lapland".
Legends and mysteries were always part of the Saami culture. One of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe, the Saami's are spread across the four countries before the modern boundaries were drawn. They live in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Kolan peninsula of present Russia. Highly tuned to the natural environment, Saami's are known to have led a nomadic life based on fishing, hunting and seasonal migrations of reindeers.
Similar to how the natives were were pushed off their land in the Americas during colonisation, the Saami's have gone through aggressive assimilation of the modern world. According to the speakers, the last forty years have seen kind of renewal of their culture , where they have managed to maintain their language, practices and shamanistic traditions. While Mr Pittja was presenting about how he is running his business as eco friendly as it is possible and how culturally sensitive he is (He is from the Saami community) towards the heritage, there were questions raised from the audiences about the threat such tourism initiatives could be creating to a life style. Some of the questions went unanswered.
Now after reading a bit about exploitation of the Saami Culture, it makes sense on some of the arguments that came up while preparing the draft announcement.
Even though the draft says that "Eco tourism needs to focus on sustainable tourism that entails responsible travel to natural areas and which conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people.”, wonder when will the local people have a right to say "No" to an initiative in tourism that they are not interested in and might not benefit anything out of it.
Out of the many old threats like mining, logging, dam building and military threats ( bombing bases in the Scandinavian and Russian regions) now tourism seems to be the new entrant!
Similar to how the natives were were pushed off their land in the Americas during colonisation, the Saami's have gone through aggressive assimilation of the modern world. According to the speakers, the last forty years have seen kind of renewal of their culture , where they have managed to maintain their language, practices and shamanistic traditions. While Mr Pittja was presenting about how he is running his business as eco friendly as it is possible and how culturally sensitive he is (He is from the Saami community) towards the heritage, there were questions raised from the audiences about the threat such tourism initiatives could be creating to a life style. Some of the questions went unanswered.
Now after reading a bit about exploitation of the Saami Culture, it makes sense on some of the arguments that came up while preparing the draft announcement.
Even though the draft says that "Eco tourism needs to focus on sustainable tourism that entails responsible travel to natural areas and which conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people.”, wonder when will the local people have a right to say "No" to an initiative in tourism that they are not interested in and might not benefit anything out of it.
Out of the many old threats like mining, logging, dam building and military threats ( bombing bases in the Scandinavian and Russian regions) now tourism seems to be the new entrant!
Oslo © GP 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
September Conference postponed
We just received an email from Kerala tourism department telling that we should postpone the Second International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations from Sep to a future date. It seems India Toursim department is planning a massive marketing initiative in New York in the background of UN General Assembly during the same period and wants most of the Kerala Tourism leaders to be there at that time.
It's been now agreed between Kerala Tourism, ICRT India and ICRT in the Leeds Met, UK to postpone the event to March 2008. Hope this is not going to create a lot of trouble for those who have already registered.
Oslo © GP 2007
It's been now agreed between Kerala Tourism, ICRT India and ICRT in the Leeds Met, UK to postpone the event to March 2008. Hope this is not going to create a lot of trouble for those who have already registered.
Oslo © GP 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Foot prints
I was kind of nervous to go on to the stage after the amazing presentation by Christy. She was so clear, composed, and had the audience spell bound. She was presenting her case on the functions of Foot Prints program, an initiative from the travel insurance company World nomads.
Christy started with a personal story of how her company initiated the program. Having bumped into a disfigured landmine victim in Cambodia kick started a process that is taking the online donations to new level! Seeing the disfigured victim in front of her, she felt so much of helplessness and didn't know what to do. Back in Australia in her office, she heard similar stories from her colleagues Chris and Simon and they decided to kick start the project donation program Foot Prints.
The beauty of the project is the outreach of the program and the amount that is involved in the donation. Whenever their clients purchase a travel insurance, they prompt their clients asking if they want to make a small donations to a needy project in various parts of the world ranging from Nairobi to Nepal.
"Small is big" seems to be attraction. A donation of one dollar or two doesn't look big on its own, but it definitely makes a difference when many of their clients do the same. Smaller donations online also ensures that Foot Prints nor their clients have to spend any extra amount for the donation transfer to project destinations as the clients have already spent their money in insurance purchase.
Within a span of year and a half, Foot print has successfully raised funds for about 12 projects and seen through completion. See here for more details of these projects. Interestingly World Nomads have also sponsored many interesting travels through Australia including the now famous journey of The three lost girls.
Oslo © GP 2007
Christy started with a personal story of how her company initiated the program. Having bumped into a disfigured landmine victim in Cambodia kick started a process that is taking the online donations to new level! Seeing the disfigured victim in front of her, she felt so much of helplessness and didn't know what to do. Back in Australia in her office, she heard similar stories from her colleagues Chris and Simon and they decided to kick start the project donation program Foot Prints.
The beauty of the project is the outreach of the program and the amount that is involved in the donation. Whenever their clients purchase a travel insurance, they prompt their clients asking if they want to make a small donations to a needy project in various parts of the world ranging from Nairobi to Nepal.
"Small is big" seems to be attraction. A donation of one dollar or two doesn't look big on its own, but it definitely makes a difference when many of their clients do the same. Smaller donations online also ensures that Foot Prints nor their clients have to spend any extra amount for the donation transfer to project destinations as the clients have already spent their money in insurance purchase.
Within a span of year and a half, Foot print has successfully raised funds for about 12 projects and seen through completion. See here for more details of these projects. Interestingly World Nomads have also sponsored many interesting travels through Australia including the now famous journey of The three lost girls.
Oslo © GP 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Update from Oslo
Typical GP act! and misplaced the camera at the conference dinner! Hmm..Hope I will get it back. Had all the photographs from Sunderbans as well as whatever I took since arriving in Oslo three days before in it!.
The conference went well yesterday. Inaugural session in the presence of the Queen of Norway was well attended by almost 400 delegates from 76 countries. Was looking forward to upload some pictures from the workshops and exhibitions for regular readers. But until the hunt for the camera is over, I guess we have to wait :)
One of the striking images at the workshop on Local partnerships for Community-Based Eco Tourism was Amos, who came dressed in his traditional attire and captivated the crowd about how they run their base camp in Masai Mara based on local-global partnerships. Svein Whilhemsen, a venture capitalist is now promoting similar business in Svalbard, Rajasthan, Dharamsala, Lamu and Solovki.
In his presentation Svein was upfront when he said, those who are looking for investments in similar projects should have immense patience and passion to sustain the slow-low returns as the trend in the industry right now is about 80% failure on community based projects! They took more than five years to break-even.
Quite an inspiring model to look at.
Oslo © GP 2007
The conference went well yesterday. Inaugural session in the presence of the Queen of Norway was well attended by almost 400 delegates from 76 countries. Was looking forward to upload some pictures from the workshops and exhibitions for regular readers. But until the hunt for the camera is over, I guess we have to wait :)
One of the striking images at the workshop on Local partnerships for Community-Based Eco Tourism was Amos, who came dressed in his traditional attire and captivated the crowd about how they run their base camp in Masai Mara based on local-global partnerships. Svein Whilhemsen, a venture capitalist is now promoting similar business in Svalbard, Rajasthan, Dharamsala, Lamu and Solovki.
In his presentation Svein was upfront when he said, those who are looking for investments in similar projects should have immense patience and passion to sustain the slow-low returns as the trend in the industry right now is about 80% failure on community based projects! They took more than five years to break-even.
Quite an inspiring model to look at.
Oslo © GP 2007
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