“I never knew Pakistan was that beautiful, I really want to go there!!”
Words i got to hear as I showed the photos and videos from my trips across Pakistan to my foreign friend here in Australia. Listening to that I thought about those 800K views I have on my photos on google maps and what it could mean if they had a portion of viewers from other countries of the world.
Being a local guide isn’t just uploading photos and posting reviews of the places you visit. It’s also about making memories and sharing your travel stories to every body you meet. I believe nothing’s more compelling than travel stories, they can easily convince someone to plan their next trip to where you’d have been.
When you tell people about your experience falling from a wooden ledge while crossing a ice cold water stream just to get a shot, in the middle of no where. Being 3 hours of drive away from your hotel in the wilderness while the sun is setting. The look on their faces and when they say, “Damn, you’ve lived it.” is worth that cold you caught after that incident.
You might have figured until now the place i’m talking about where it happened, a wooden lodge, ice cold water stream… yes, the picture above is exactly the spot it happened at. Luckily took a good picture in dry clothes before the blow.
Being a local guide is worth it when you visit remote places and you get the opportunity to represent the actual local guides of those remote valleys with no internet access to the world. It enables you to broadcast the local experiences, the stories of the people living in those far off places.
Being a local guide enables me to promote tourism of my own country. Considering the potential it holds i believe that Pakistan can be one of the top travel destination of the world. I say that with high confidence having traveled whole country from far wide north to south. I know that the platform google has provided would not only help people around the world to travel in a better way but help shift the paradigm of the whole tourism game of the country.
When you see the number of tourists increasing every year, you know and believe that your little contribution on google maps had an impact one way or another, this in the end is what i feel is WORTH IT!