Hello to all the Moderators and Local Guide friends!
Today I am going to tell you about the significance of Local Guide Program in my journeys, my stories and my life.
I really started using Google Maps extensively when I, along with my family, shifted from my hometown, Kolhapur (Maharashtra, India) to a new city of Pune (Maharashtra, India) in the year 2015. Pune is approximately 230 kilometers (142 miles) away from my hometown. It was all very new to me and my family. And at such time, I found Google Maps immensely helpful and was marveled by how convenient and easy to use it was.
My family shares my love for travel and we arrange a tour every year to a different location throughout India. In the December of 2016, I arranged a family trip to Kerala, India taking help of Google Maps reviews entirely and it turned out amazing. Based on the reviews I read, it helped me to learn about best tourist places, modes of travel and appropriate allocation of time for every tourist spot. This is when I was motivated to write reviews of different places I visited here. My sole purpose was to help fellow tourists like me. Although, initially, my writing skills fell short and I wasn’t able to be as articulate as I wanted to. [See examples below]
But, I did not give it up. Driven by my enthusiasm to give something back to the community, I went on writing reviews and helping out others, as others have helped me. I started to write reviews for local places and over the years my writing skills developed. I have been a proud Local Guide on Google Maps for more than 4 years now. [See examples below]
Last year, in March, I was introduced to Local Guide Connect. Local Guide Connect is a great platform for worldwide Local Guides like me. It is a place for us contributors to come together, learn about new places and ways in which we can sharpen our skills. My sphere expanded and I made many friends from all over the world. I learned to present my knowledge and skills even better. I was extremely overjoyed when two of my posts were selected in ‘Friday Favorites’. Below are the links of my selected posts in ‘Friday Favorites’.
Jaisalmer - The Golden City Of India
I think platforms like Google Maps and Local Guide Connect bring about the level of transparency which enables a common person, like me, to walk through an unknown road and reach to an unknown new place without concern or doubt. It helps people travelling around in different areas to not be duped or taken advantage of by ill-spirited locals and, at the same time, it helps us to appreciate and learn everything we want to know about the place. So, a big thank you for providing such great platforms.