Exploring the rich historical heritage of nearby unheralded places
I have been participating as a local guide for a few years and it has made a huge impact on my life. My ambition is to help people understand the significance of their nearby places through the Google Local Guides initiative. I am making good progress with 3.7 lakhs views about relatively unknown places.
One of my main hobbies is to explore relatively unknown places with a rich history. These places are seeped with rich historical legacy but stand undifferentiated in daily buzz and remain unbeknownst even to the surrounding general population who had not known or forgotten the rich heritage with the passage of time. What started as just one time activity of using Google Maps in searching for interesting places around me, it surprised me with important information about few surrounding places. This motivated me to seek out such places in my city(Chennai) and eventually to places that are hundreds of miles away. I wanted to share this information and educate the people about the proud monuments that they might never spare a glance. I felt that the google maps will be the best place for people to casually identify the nearby places.
I also use the platform to tag educational institutions to help people easily discover places of learning around them.
Few of the interesting unheralded places that I marked on maps:
Victory Memorial Blind School, Chennai:
This is my most favourite place in Chennai and has a fascinating history surrounded by nature. This is a 250+ year old military fort turned into a light of hope for thousands of visually challenged people by serving as a high school for them. The fort was originally built in 1731 and converted into Asia’s first high school in 1931. Unfortunately, the significance of the place is not known and this motivated me to explore and shine the light on as many places as possible. This had a great effect on my friends and neighbours. People are really interested and surprised by the history of a seemingly ordinary school in their city. I had many people reaching out to me to know more about this place.
Varadharajar Temple, near Chennai:
This temple is believed to be constructed during 1191 CE. It is a very huge temple spanning 90,000 sq.m and has a 130ft tall gateway tower. Many kingdoms and dynasties made contributions to the temple spanning multiple centuries.
Anna Centenary Library, Chennai:
Though it is a relatively new library established in 2010, many people underestimate the sheer size and collections of the library. It is built over 133,000 sq.m with 9 floors. It houses 1.2 million books and has a dedicated kids section of 15000 sq.ft.
Jaya Jaya Sankara School, Chennai:
This really good school with good coaching methodologies remained in obscurity since it is in a suburb. I had posted a review about this and it had been viewed and helped 30k visitors till date.
The Google Local Guides program helped me explore a lot of unheralded places and I am returning the favour and trying to help the locals in understanding the significance of their neighbourhood. It has also resulted in meeting new people and even forging strong friendships with people who share the same interests in knowing the historical places.
Overall Google Local Guides program has made a really positive impact in my life.