Live the Shades of Fun and Adventure with Camping

Since the early 20th century, camping has been one of the most preferred outdoor recreational activities. Camping is about living the tranquility of open air spaces, away from the noises of everyday life. This activity may call for the use of a tent, cabin, caravan, Motor home, an ancient structure or absolutely no no roof over your head. Camping may also mean a high value at a low cost accommodation for people attending sporting or musical events.

A camping planned well and combined with other outdoor activities can turn out to be an adventure of a lifetime. For example, hiking is another activity that goes hand in hand with camping. To name a few more activities that complement camping are fishing, hill walking, mountain biking, swimming, white water kayaking, canoeing, etc.,. There are several travel planners who have  a plethora of lucrative packages available and they also custom make  packages as per your requirements. This kind of arrangement is very convenient for the novices. In fact, it is also a lot of fun to plan it yourself if you are an experienced camper.

A camping activity may be classified into different categories depending on the nature of it. Some of the classifications are mentioned below:

Mobile Camping:

The most popular and the cheapest form of mobile camping is backpacking. A backpacker needs to carry everything they would need to survive during their camping period on their backs. This gives a true sense of the wilderness and for it to be accomplished one needs to be in good physical condition. This can be extremely thrilling but at the same time can wear you out too. With the latest innovations in camping equipments, there are a lot of them that come with lighter weights than it used to be 50 years ago. For example, ultra-light synthetic fabrics, Titanium cookware, heat-molded hip straps, and down sleeping bags are much lighter than their predecessors. Mobile Camping also involves using animals like mules and horses as ride-ons or for carrying the equipments. Cycling and sailing are also favored by a lot of backpackers.

Social Camping:

This form of camping brings together all the like minded campers from different geographical locations . There are organizations across the world that arrange for these kind of camps and invite people to join them. In addition to being recreational, they can be a lot of fun for families, children or single campers. It brings about a sense of bonding between people who didn’t even know each other and creates a lasting relationship.

Some interesting specialized camps:

Glamping: This is for campers who do not want to miss out on the luxuries that they are used to while they are camping. This kind of camping is quite an expensive affair though there are different rates for different levels of luxury. Glamping site lodging structures include Yurts, tipis, pods, bell, tents, cabins and tree houses. This is all about camping in style while being in the comforts of your living room.

Adventure Camping: It includes mostly adventure racing or mountain biking. Bare minimum camping equipments like microcamping stove, sleeping bag and bivouac bag, are used.

Historical Camping: This camping is about going back to an era or period in history and reenacting the livelihood of that period. Equipments used are custom made. The purpose is enjoyment, thrill or educational.

Urban camping: Camping outdoors overnight in an urban locality.

Survivalist: Surviving in the wild and depending on the nature, for your meals. This also calls for obtaining first aid and emergency relief from the nature.

Minimalist: Carrying very few equipments and camping gear, is the style of these campers.

Winter Camping: Campers sleep or spend the night outdoors in the winter and when it snows. The methods used to survive is building shelters in the snow like igloos, quinzhees and snow caves. Wearing layered clothes and staying dry are as important as eating the right kind of feed to keep the body warm from within. Use of sleeping and bivouac bags are imperative.

Workcamping: Campers offer their services to camp sites in lieu of free shelter in the camps.

Equipments used for Camping:

Some of the camping gears used by backpackers and by glampers are truly astounding and resembles home in mini packets. Let’s take a look at what they are:

–          Sleeping bag onesies

–          Biolight camp / stove charges

–          Water trampoline

–          Pocket shower

–          Hanging cupboard

–          Portable washing machine

–          Netted hammock

–          Double sleeping bag

–          Beautifully designed Tents

–          Fire crystals

–          Inflatable tent

–          Trunk kitchen / bar

–          Off-road commode

–          Camping chair

–          Solar fire starter

–          Solar powered water bottle with cap  light

–          Swiss Army knife

–          Waterproof solar lamp

–          Hand-crank blender

–          Portable kitchen folding up in a suitcase

–          Bed tents

–          Pet tents

–          Cast iron waffle maker

–          A grilling basket

–          Portable sink

–          Glow in the dark ball set

–          Hitch camping chairs

–          Stackable eating set

–          A mini flashlight

–          Glow in the dark tape

–          Propane coffee maker

–          Popane party hub grill

Camping is all about having fun and discovering the primitive way of living life. Let’s go ahead and discover the savage side in you.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hoseini

It is a masterpiece that can make your heart ache with the desire of being there for the small little angels of the troubled cities of Afghanistan. The spurt in egression to Pakistan, America and other parts of the world, triggered by the Russian takeover and followed by the Taliban regime, speak volumes about the atrocities on the civilians.  Khaled’s vocalization in the form of a series of events in this story is truly commendable. The ruthless killings of the innocent and rampaging one village after the other is just a glimpse of the animosity unfolded by the Taliban. The insanity of these human monsters would drive you crazy and you will find yourself cringing for the kids of that land.

This is a story of a boy whose mother passed away giving birth to him and about how he strives for the better half of his life to get his father’s attention. In the bargain, he gets his ties estranged with his best childhood friend in a way that they never meet again. It was very late in his life that the biggest revelation comes his way where he was told that the friend whom he had severed his ties with, many years back, was his half brother. The guilt of his sinful and cowardly act makes him an insomniac. The author presents this situation beautifully with one of the characters making a profound statement that meant anybody without a heart and conscience would never suffer. It’s human to suffer and then look for redemption. It was his redemption to go back to Taliban affected Afghanistan to rescue his half brother’s son from the merciless Talib demons.

This story is a real eye opener to the ones completely oblivious to the pain and suffering in Afghanistan and awakens ones moral.

I recommend this as a ‘Must Read’ for all !!!

 

Is it really difficult to be a Leader?

A colorful ride

To me, the hubbub around the need to be and the way to be a leader is unfathomable. There are literatures and novels written by authors to teach the parameters and techniques to be a good leader. Not underplaying the efforts one puts in to teach and to learn leadership techniques, I would like to put forth my approach to be exemplary in every role that one takes up. Being the leader of your own life is the mantra and the rest follows.

Without much ado let’s talk about the need for you to be a leader. What do you mean by the word ‘leader” and why do you want to be one? The answers to these questions should cause you to peep inside and draw an introspection analysis report.

Being in a management role for sometime in a couple of companies, I always wondered if it was required of…

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Google Analytics

Google analytics is a mighty analytical tool launched in the year 2006 by google. Statistical analysis of traffic for online marketing and campaigns, couldn’t have been simpler without this spectacular apparatus. Google analytics in short, is a data-mining intelligence that provides a revolutionary perspective to traffic generation in the world of online advertisers.

5 major benefits of Google analytics:

Tracking Business conversion:

This indeed is a system meant not for the web masters but for marketers and business Owners. A business without being tracked for conversion is a complete contrariness to business objectives and  goals. Google analytics help you segregate the traffic density demographically.  It also displays the keywords used to pull up your website. The data generated is enormous and the conclusive trend analysis that it may provide is unbelievable.

You can use this data to focus your campaign around specific market segments to target a niche crowd. SEO customization of key words as per your marketing strategy may also be aided by information derived from this tool. Apart from this, the data provided in terms of the amount of time spent on your website, number of new or returning visitors is quite enlightening. It’s important to bear in mind that all of this information can be used in some way or the other, but may be differently for every business.

The yield from Social networking:

Google analytics help to track the productivity from campaigning on social networking sites. What sets it apart from the other tools is the fact that it tracks performance for all networking sites on one dashboard. Social networking is the most effective way to connect with a wider range of audience through friends and family thereby integrating the most important  factor i.e., trust, in your campaigns. This makes it imperative for the business owners to study the variations from this angle and make changes as it demands. It is interesting to know the ROI from each one of your networking sites and have a  marketing plan for social networks added to your list of business goals

Scoping the response from Mobile browsing:

There’s a whopping increase in the figures for web-browsing on handsets with the advent of Android and windows mobile operating systems and google analytics provides data on this one too. Fast internet connectivity through 3G and 4G connections have made mobile handsets a more favorable ground for web-browsing. Google Analystics actuates the number of times your website was visited through mobile devices and also the type of device that it was accessed through. This in turn stresses on the urgency of creating mobile enhanced versions of your web pages or the downloadable app versions for mobile devices.

 

Recording the efficiency of your advertisements:

The first step towards starting a successful business and drawing customers to it, is by advertising your product effectively. Therefore it is of great significance to track the potency of your online ad campaigns done through various channels like online classified ads, emails, affiliates, social media, search engines, floating and popup ads, banner ads, etc. Apart from this Google analytics is also integrated with Adwords and Adsence and determines the lead generation and conversion rates for each one of them individually.

Redesigning your campaigns as per data received from this system may prove to be very beneficial for your business. Although there is a lot of web statistic plugins available, however, the detailing provided by Google analytics is unparalleled.

Evaluation of content adequacy

A web page devoid of any content or effective content doesn’t speak much for its capability to draw traffic. To that end it is of prime importance to analyze data in terms of your content performance.The comments, likes and feedback for your blogs, posts and web pages, speak volumes for the kind of content that would draw the attention of your target audience. This tool gives a lot of direction in upgrading your posts and deciding on topics that would provide an interesting read or information to your prospective customers / clients.