[noflylist]

Got my new LP India 2007 in mail from amazon.com They had promised DEC delivery so pleasantly surprised).

Just glancing through Maharashtra pages. Notable ommission. Happy and furious at the same time.
They have ommited a place where nature is your surrounding, where you literally stay above the clouds, where if you get out of your hotel room you are greeted with cliifs and valleys and monkeys, where all you do is lounge around in hotel verandah and soak in the nature.

Indian tourists have discovered it for decades, how did LP miss it! I am talking about ... Khandala!

I am happy that next time I go from Mumbai in weekend trip, I do not have to compete with backpackers for already overpriced hotel rooms in the area. (LP mensions neighboring ...Lonavala which is overcrowded, autorickshaw fumes, overpriced).

Thank you LP.

Edited by noflylist, 14 October 2007 - 11:03 PM.

[cyberhippie]

I've added it to my website, when are you next visiting NFL I can arrange for all my dreadlocked mates to be there too  

[noflylist]

Sarina Singh has missed the boat about Matheran too, last email I had from a hotel in Matheran was saying toy train is up and running!

But, unlike other parts in India, Matheran has strong unions, and the prices of horses, taxi to city outskirts from Neral etc are fixed with very little room for bargaining LP prices are outdated by atleast 18 months, I doubt in this case Sarina Singh or anybody has actually travelled to Matheran.

That's it, I will not complaint about LP anymore, and I have looked at only few pages in Maharashtra!

I have never seen a 'foren face here too.

How do all these 'real' travellers miss all the gems! And that is my real beef!

Edited by noflylist, 14 October 2007 - 10:10 PM.

[WonderWomanUSA]

Quote

How do all these 'real' travellers miss all the gems! And that is my real beef!

You wouldn't believe the people who update some of these books.

When I was last in Puri, I met someone who was updating the Fodor guide. Wondering how she'd travelled to Puri, I asked if she had liked Kolkata ... an obvious prior stop.

Oh, she hadn't gone to Kolkata because her friends in New York told her it was a terrible city, so that part of the guidebook wasn't to be updated. Her friends, it turned out, were Gujeratis who had probably never been to Kolkata and were probably scared to death at the thought of visiting Kali's home town. <sigh>

The LP is updated with input by travellers, but of course, even if someone had e-mailed them about a truly great place, if their staff writers never got there to check the place out, it wouldn't be listed. In that case, the very best thing to do is to KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!

There are a few places that, when asked which part of India I like the best, I don't talk about. Maybe when I'm so old that I won't be able to get to India again, I will tell people about them ..

[noflylist]

I want tourists to discover gems in India! Let the locals flourish!

[Shiver me Timbers]

Some LP writers are good, some not so. Sarina Singh is one of the 'not so', in my experience. The Pak LP ws the worst I've used, and I remember faulting her for some stuff in the last India edition.

[cyberhippie]

She was the darling of the LP India crowd I believe. I met a couple of LP staff on the train to Bharatpur and they were enthusing over this lady and her efforts for the new LP guide.
Anyway I won't go too far as I haven't clapped eyes on the new edition.

I remember watching a docu on signing up free lance writers for a gig with LP for a European country. The applicants were an enthusiastic bunch but in terms of travel experience they had little to offer.
Most had done journalism/media in college, it seemed to me they were using the chance to build a CV, rather than from a love of travel!

That's Ok and I'm sure that little excerpt doesn't tell the whole story of writers on LP  and when writing to a formula, is traveller "savvy" really necessary....................In all honesty probably not.