Way to go: Learn while you travel

GURGAON: Travelling can be a great learning experience, more so, when teamed up with activities that make a place more interesting to explore. Courses in photography, wine tasting, and wildlife appreciation are being offered by travel experts, in Gurgaon. The city is responding positively to the new itineraries and taking summer courses while on the go.
Varun Gupta of Travelling Lens is a photographer himself, who has been travelling extensively to shoot. “I picked up photography during one of my vacations in the hills, and I decided to sell the idea to people who were interested in learning things in a different way,” said Varun.
The response has been overwhelming from a diverse clientele in the age group 14- 55 years.
“They can take a beginner’s or advanced level course, and concentrate only on the photography as we manage their travel,” he added. Even family holidays are being planned around such activity based travel.
“I like poetry and wanted to explore it through interaction with poets and critics, but there was no time. This vacation is not just for me, but for my children who have been attending the same summer camps every year, and are now quite bored of them,” said Sandeep Chaudhary, who travelled to six destinations in Europe, including Paris, London, and Frankfurt, and took lessons on poetry with family and fellow travellers.
Female travellers have also been very active in the city, and the group Women on Wanderlust, which gets women together on wildlife appreciation trips across South Africa, is gaining much popularity among the corporate ladies.
“I love the jungle safari and it was much more exciting to learn about the animals from a local naturalist. Nothing beats that experience.This time I took a course on white tigers,” said Ameeta Singh, a chartered accountant by profession.