“ God why did you kept me in this concrete jungle made me a machine…
Take me to a place were heaven and beauty makes its unique combination…
Guide me to this place so that I can meet you and ask you, why have you kept this place secluded from the world…”
I always had a dream and wanted to be to Antartica and planning a trip to this beautiful island continent where silence takes you to the different world and different high in your life. Now going to this place is not a big joke, first you need to get lot of information. For this I started world’s biggest resources and doing searches on the Internet and during this I found lonelyplanet.com.
https://lonelyplanet.com/destinations/antarctica/antarctica/
First, I thought this to be the part of discovery channel, because I was a regular viewer of the show, Lonely planet were the guides use to travel to places were no one has ever been and give some in depth pictures of these places. Yep Pilot productions have tied up with discovery in showing the episodes, by my favourite Hosts, Ian Wright and Justine Shapiro. In one of the episodes, one of the hosts had to drink the snake blood in Vietnam which is said to make your body cool!!! Yuck!!!
Before, going to this website, let me give you some facts about this whole travel scenario on the internet. People who travel a lot, this should be some good overview of the Travelling scenario.
Facts and Findings…
By 2001, approximately 35% of all e-business on the net will be travel related, with conservative estimates in the region of US$ 70 billion -- Forrester
India currently has the highest leisure travel growth rate in the world with a compounded annual growth rate of over 30%.
Imagine, the amount of people who are going to travel and internet being the biggest resources, people are going to login and search for the immediate information. Hence, travelling websites need to go a step a head and not just being a portal should give more information.
Lonelyplanet.com
Till recently, I didn’t knew that lonely planet has been the leader in the tourist guidebooks. Their books have been with full resources for the independent travellers, like maps, hotels, and photos etc, which are said to be very reliable and have been well known. Now these guys, needed an online presence hence converted their rich experience in giving one of the most simple and content rich website.
DESIGN
The first look at the website will make you really disappointed, because it is not a great design and definitely not to the International standard. The first look of it gave me a feel that it has been made by some novice. But don’t for a second get discouraged because it doesn’t stop here but goes on to become one of the best content rich travelling website found on the Internet. No doubt the fonts used on this websites are very consistent and the website does load faster on a simple dialup connection.
CONTENT
As I have said earlier, it is rich in content and the different section of websites gives a traveller a great resource of information.
World guides
This is the very useful as far as the maps and the in depth overview of the city’s and country’s giving detail about the specific destination. I wanted to check the city of Sydney Opera house and hence followed this path.
This is how it works:
Step 1 Map of Australia/pacific
Step 2 Click on Map of Australia
Step 3 Click on Sydney
Step 4 Click on Sydney Opera House
& Bingo!!!1 You have the complete information about SOH.
Theme Guides
This for people who like the place but don’t know were to go. Imagine, making a plan for visiting the Egypt and checking out the pyramids and the mummies.
Twilight Zone
Twilight zone, is a place for absurd things in this earth. Something like the Bermuda Triangle, The Mummy’s curse etc. Great stuff!!
Music
Want to check out some place of the music guys; this is a fantastic link to check out.
Mississipi Delta Blues - USA
Glastonbury Festival - England
CBGBs - New York
Mozart’s Salzburg – Austria
Beaches
I know you must be thinking after all those stuffs for music and weird place loving people what is in stored for you beach guys, there are some great information depth on the worlds best beaches.
Venice Beach - Los Angeles
Bondi Beach - Sydney
Copacabana Beach - Brazil
Omaha Beach – France
Great stuff isn’t it. It is and there are much stored.
Thorn tree
Want to speak to a fellow traveller on your experiences and thoughts about the place you visited, this is place were your fellow travellers post their messages and a kind of travelling forum.
Scoop
This place for your regular and some great travelling scoops hovering around. You have the International travelling news giving you the updated information.
eKno
Like most of the websites offer one stop shop, these guys also offer your things like a free web-mail , phone card service and enough space to store all your travelling documents online.
On the road
Are you interested in knowing more information and facts about the country you are visiting then check this section which gives you an in depth information about that country.
Apart from you have the Postcard section, the health section for your medicinal problems, you have want to purchase travelling books and videos, you have the Propaganda section.
So don’t miss this website, after this you will never be lonely, always have the company of a fellow traveller looking for information and asking you about your country.