Our blog

Nagaland. Jimmy Singh - our Himalayan tour partner - has just done the first tour to Nagaland, India. Kumar visited the area last year and is in the process of getting a tour up on the website. Jimmy says "the people of Nagaland justified my absolute faith in them as a friendly, honourable, peace loving people".

April 18th 2008

A little bit of Sri Lanka in South Harrow. Just back from South Harrow, outside London, where one of Kumar's friends (Tharanga) has set up a restaurant. We've been helping him get the atmosphere right. Today we chose the name - The Cococnut Tree - and soon we'll have a delivery of huge batiks, clay lamps and devil masks.

The wonderful thing about doing anything with Sri Lankan's though is the good humoured 'togetherness'. Even in South Harrow, the hospitality is overwhelming - a continuous delivery of mango lassi's, cashew nuts deep fried with ginger, hoppers, a continuous steam of visitors - both Tamil and Sinhalese visting to see how things are going. We hope to launch Saturday week - if you want to good Sri Lankan curry I can send you in the right direction.

April 3rd 2008

Staying in the village. General Jimmy Singh has emailed with his latest news.

General set up the village homestay tour with us about a year ago. The tour is based in the village of Samthar in the Indian Himalaya. The idea is to help the villagers set up their own homestays and use a portion of the income to run a village school.

General says "we have 4 teachers for 3 classes plus two helpers and a caretaker. All of a sudden the school is running very smoothly and I have no worries. The infrastructure is complete and we have equiped the classes well....Overall I am satisfied that I have showed them the way to earn by staying in the village. Hopefully they realize?".

You can hear Jimmy Singh talk about the project via Paul Goodwin's webite - Planetary Voices.

March 28th 2008

Persistance and passion. An email has arrived in our inbox from Palitha, our Sri Lankan tour partner. What an extraordinary man he is. Even with tourism in the country grinding to a holt, he never gives up. He's now working with the American Red Cross and Mercy Corps launching a new travel agency 'Deep South Holidays', all based around community participation. Luckily his work is being well recognised - he's been invited to speak and attends regular meetings in Japan, Norway and Thailand.

March 25th 2008

Just watching everyday life. I've just been re-reading the feedback from Helen who recently came back from 10 days in the Himalaya. I have a particular interest in this tour at the moment because my cousin, Poppy, is going there on her honeymoon in May. Helen and her 71 year old mother stayed Ganesh's homestay in Sikkim. Their comments about Ganesh were particularly lovely:

"Ganesh has so much to show people that I think he could easily spread it out over more days and slow down the pace. I think it is hard for the family to understand that their life is *so* different to ours that just watching everyday life as it goes on around you and sitting soaking up the atmosphere is entertainment enough. I could happily have stayed another week - spending more time on the farm and learning how to cook some of the delicious dishes we were served. I would definitely love to go back one day".

March 19th 2008

We've been told that a blog will increase our Google ranking. The recipe for a good blog (so I'm told) is that:

a) It must be updated twice a week
b) It needs to masterfully embed with all our top Google ranking keys words.

So here we are, the beginnings of the Insider Tours blog, with the words 'India' and 'Sri Lanka' and 'tour' and 'tour' and ''tour' throughout. The blog is written by Harriet in conversation with Kumar.

March 14th 2008

Do send me your thoughts and comments -info@insider-tours.com - Harriet.