Hello LG_Fam!!
Post covid days , happy days, normal days and yes meetup days… Yes we did have a meetup after covid.
Last week, June 5th 2022 we have planned a meetup [Post Covid Meet] at Lamakaan and as planned it went well.
I will from now describe this meetup in a unorthodox way.
5th June 2022 4:00 pm : Messages in the Hyderabad Local guides group were popping up and people kept the excitement high.
4:30 pm: Rain god test : Started raining in few areas around hyderabad. I was worried , it was heavy in few areas and was just drizzling around the meetup location and the scenes looked bad.
Messages kept coming and i know what they read before i open them, but that is understandable, it is dfficult to commute in hyderabad when it rains and i would not ask any local guide to take the trouble to come because this is just the restart and there will be many meetups to come.
5:00 pm: I started travelling to the meetup location , it was drizzling on the way but not that bad. I was little sad as i had high hopes to meet HYD LGs after long time. Phone rings… tring tring… i answered and it was Chakri Garu
Chakri Garu : Hey Naren where are you man ?, i am at Lamakaan.
Wow, that is some happy news , i paced up and informed him i will be there in 10 mins. Reached the location aroung 5:25 pm. Met him and we started discussing, knew him from previous meets, it is my third time meeting him. We spoke about how covid effected us and how we came out of the covid scare, we went nto old time and remembered old memories,
5:35 pm: Junaid bhai calls me .
Junaid Bhai : I am at Lamakaan where are you ? i waved at him and he came towards us, This is the first time i met him. Here is a shout out to this amazing guy , He travelled 165 Kms to attend the meetup , can you believe it ? and he has to travel 165 kms back to reach home at night. and its not just that he has added Hundreds of Roads on google maps , he even taught us how to do it , which is new to me, a big take away. He is one inspirational person.
Around 5:50 pm , more people came in , i seriously did not expect this, We had 9 people attending a meetup after covid and this is the first we had since. No joke right !
We started introducing each other, Prabhakar garu broke the ice and started first , [wait … yes we got chai and samosa and some nimbu pani on the table] . He started how he has been spending his time contributing to google maps , how covid was challenging and he was happy to back around people after long time, It went round robin followed by Veerendhar reddy garu , another intresting character, his excitement is on a next level, then continued with chakri garu, me , Jaya garu , and ok lets pause here .
Jaya garu, you can call her silent yet valuable contributor, she talked very less but was taking lot of information, she belives in quality, if a place really touches her heart only then they end up in the contributions, so they gota be good. This is the first time i met her. Ok then lets continue , i keep stopping the narration but it is needed. These guys are seriously good Local guides. To be frank we had no agenda for the meet it was just to come under one shelter and connect to each others journey.
Then venkat reddy garu share his journey , how the google maps popups turned him excited and how he started contribution. To most of us it was connecting one, we never knew we were local guides it just happend.
I said the loop goes round robin right ? yes it still is , next to speak is Usha Garu, she is a true traveller, she spoke about how Covid lockdown has provided time to spend on maps, she is very detailed on the reviews and she says it just comes from inside to describe the place to the best. Here we were talking numbers aye ! We were seeing how many pictures each has, how many photo views , how may videos views and it was just to keep each other motivated and nothing else. At the end numbers harldy matters infront of Quality .
Next in the queue is Junaid bhai, 165 kms guys , no joke at all. I would not have gone this far for a meetup , i truely mean it. He even went to Mumbai for a recent meetup, this guy just breaks every record i say. He taught us how to add roads.
At the end came Ramakishore garu and it was good to meet him, missed meeting him at local guides connect live hyderabad.
Chai, Samosa and Nimbu pani at lamakaan need no intro, best in class. It was a great meetup, 9 members is not a small number, i was in few meetups where we were just 2 people so with 9 i am so proud and can say old days are back.
We took a picture to cherish the moment, greeted each other and parted ways around 7:30 Pm
Here are few clicks
Decent meetup right ? Missed few people but yes rain played its card at the wrong time, never mind lets host next one soon.
Bomb your suggestions for the next meetup please.
Location:
Date and Time:
Thanks and regards,
Naren Chandra
Local Guides Hyderabad
