I am sorry! I have been missing in action in the blogosphere for a few weeks now. My PC conked off and I was kinda crippled and then when I got it repaired a week or so back it took a while for me to catch up on everything. Anyways now that I am back I thought of giving you a little update on what has been happening!

August has been a good month! There was a quiet a  bit of exciting action for India Backpack Motorbike that was very encouraging. The first big piece is that I participated in the ‘3 Things in the City I love Contest’ organized by Traveldudes. Velvet Escape and Wimdu.co.uk . And I made it among the 10 finalists and won a € 50 voucher for making it to the list. The funny thing there was that I did not even know for a day or two that I won it! Only  the guys who won the 3rd prize made put up a blog post and linked me back did I realize that I’d actually won it! Great! Yay! Here are the 10 blogs that made it to the finals. Each of the city has a charm of its own I must say and I would love to be there.

FIRST PRIZE
To Destination Unknown: Dublin – City I Still Love
Voucher(s) worth EUR 800

Dublin - Source : todestinationunknown.com

SECOND PRIZE
Isla Organic: London – 3 Things in the City I Love
Voucher(s) worth EUR 400

London - Source : Islaorganic.com

THIRD PRIZE
AngloItalian Follow Us: Visuals from Vibrant Venice – a City I Love
Voucher(s) worth EUR 250

Venice - Source:angloitalianfollowus.com

FINALISTS receive a voucher worth EUR 50 each (Except the top 3)

Here are the ten finalists (in no specific order).

- Here and there in Jozi – Johannesburg

- India Backpack Motorbike – Mumbai (Yours Truly)

- To Destination Unknown – Dublin

- Bunny’s Travel – Cape Town

- AngloItalian Folow Us – Venice

- Cape Town Collectables – Cape Town

- Benedict Cooper – Hanoi

- Journey of a Lifetime -Istanbul

- Rudayna – Mumbai

- Isla Organic – London

Congratulations to all the winners!

Moving on from here the second exciting thing was that I was invited by my college from where I completed my post graduation to the batch that will be graduating in a few months time. I considered that as something really big considering I was just an average Joe throughout my college  who did not remarkable during my 2 years there nor did I achieve anything in the 6 years of corporate career once I passed out. I went out there nervous as well as excited but came back really happy with the way I delivered my talk. The most remarkable thing about it was the I somehow managed to make the talk light-hearted, humorous and yet hitting the point that I wanted to. The students were excited as well to know about my journey, blogging and et al, and I have been told that this was ‘the best talk they had this term.’ Way to pleased I should say! And am looking forward to some more sessions like this in the near future.

The final bit of the news that came towards the end of this month when one of my blogger friends called and asked me if I wanted to be a judge of a travel contest that he was a part of. The blogger contest is called Indian Bloggers League wherein bloggers team up based on the cities they are from and then challenge each other on some genre of blogging. So when the team of Ahmedabadi Tadka duelled with Kolkatta Knight Writers in the blogging space in the travelogue category, they asked me to be the judge of the one of the posts by the participants. It was nice fun reading this post by Shubham Choudhary, and then passing my verdict on the same.

So those were the great things happening in the month of August. They may not be anything fantastically awesome but getting a bit more known in the world is always nice. Hope the September provides some more challenges and excitement. Cheers!

Last updated by Venkat Ganesh at October 12, 2021.