Friday, June 15, 2012

Joys of a responsible traveller



As part of our responsible tourism initiative ,we at IT Nature Club invite our guests to experience the joy of travel with the satisfaction of being partners to bring about a social change to the destination, whenever they travel with us. One such inititaive was creating a library for the Polestar School at Hee, along with Arunaya Foundation during our recently concluded tour of West Sikkim ( Holiday in the monuntains). Polestar School is run by a village committee which overseas the day today functioning of the school.Most of the contributions are made by the villagers themselves and also from their well-wishers. The school has grades 1 to grade 8 with nearly 120 students studying here. As of now the school is run in a rented basement of a commercial buidling with wooden partitions dividing the classes.With the monetory contribution of Arunaya Foundation , the guests who had travelled with us earlier and few well-wishers, we could gift the school 200 books which will go a long way in nurturing their knowledge in various subjects. Mr.Srinivas & Mrs.Sudha , who are part of group travelling with us, were so overwhelmed with the dedication of the teachers and enthusiasm of the students, they immediately gifted a cheque of Rs.5,000/- to be utilized for the infrastructure development of the school.Our profound thanks to Help Tourism for giving us the opportunity to partner with them in helping to create this library for Polestar school. We were really touched by the way the school greeted our guests and put up a small cultural show. 



Monday, June 11, 2012

Black and Yellow Grosbeak

Grosbeaks are beautiful birds. Their unique thick beaks makes them stand out, even when they are perched far away . 


For me , spotting the endemic Black and Yellow Grosbeak was a very thrilling experience during the recently concluded tour of Explore Nandadevi National Park (http://www.itnatureclub.in)


Abhijeet and myself spent considerable amount of time, checking and rechecking the details. The photo clicked be wasn't very clear .However, as luck has it, I had a very clear picture of the female of the species which was out in the open very close to the tree on which the male was perched. 


Black and Yellow Grosbeak
Such awesome sighting is what makes a tour very special and memorable.