Hi Local Guide Folks,
There is a very strong feeling inside me that transforms into a virtual magnet which gets pulled towards another larger stronger virtual magnet residing in the mountains. And this attraction is so strong that it leaves me with no other option but to quickly pack my Rucksack with my winter clothing, hiking footwear, some power bank, torches, etc. and the most important equipment my DSLR kit and my mobile phone.
Hello everyone, I am Devansh a Level 8 Google Local Guide from India who is mad about photography, traveling to the places like mountains, hill stations, glaciers, waterfalls, etc. and sharing my experience with the whole World through Google Maps.
Google Maps, a global tool that helps you to navigate through the paths to the unknown unprecedented world and as simple as takes you to your office and home as well. Through Google Local Guide feature I can add my feeling, my experiences about all those places that I visited in the past through textual descriptions, photographs, videos and not to forget those amazing 360 degrees Panaromas. Adding missing information or places or editing the existing erroneous information about places is a great feature to support the drive to improve always and make world a better place. Helping people who have some query about places that we have already visited in past is another added benefit Google Maps provides to Local Guides. When it comes to me, in addition to above, why I am excited about Google Local Guides is the amount of happiness and love I get from people from all around the globe in form of likes and views on my contribution. That fills me with encouragement to do more and better whatever I have done it now.
My Journey with Google Maps as Local Guide started with an incident that I cannot forget yet. While I was on a trip to Himachal way back couple of years ago, we found an exciting place for food on the road side. We were a bunch of 7 friends. So, we wanted to let our other friends to visit that place while they take the same road to Himachal. But how do we do it, we opened Google Maps and that place wasn’t there on it, then we figured out a way to add it and from then I have been contributing day in day out for all te places that I visit so that people don’t miss out on the fun that I had.
Google Maps helps us in all the perspectives from day to day to visiting occasional or even rare places. And I feel equally encouraged to return the favor in whatever way it may be possible.
Coming back to my passion for travelling and photography, I would like to share my experiences during my recent trekking trips to Himalayas, one of them was from Kasol to Kheerganga and another one from McLeod Ganj to Triund and back. Both of the tracks has its own set of differences.
When I visited the Kheerganga trek, it was a chilled winter time of December and the trekking paths are quite narrow and steep. Google Maps helped me to figure out the paths when I felt like lost.
Also, I could find my Cafes on the way and I added photographs, 360s and videos of them so that people get to know about those places.
Similarly, while I was on a hiking trip to Triund from McLeod Ganj, it wasn’t too cold as those were the days of this very month (April) only. The paths were broader but filled with quite wobbly stones that adds to the risk while hiking. Also, there were many small cafes on the way to binge on to keep the strength for hiking.
We took endless pictures/videos/360s for 2 days on reaching the top, both the places Kheerganga and Triund and quickly uploaded them to Google maps after reaching back to my hotel in the valley.
Thanks
