By N.K.A. Ballal, Retd. Sr. Vice-President, ITDC
Recently, I received an invitation from one Mr. Reddy for the inauguration of a “glamping” site at Mysuru. Impressive website. What is glamping? Simple, it is “glamorous camping.” Camping in style. Well, I am happy some entrepreneur has at last thought of this idea, which is quite common in the West and has ventured to provide it to our citizens. We Indians lack adventure and only a few venture out to try these new forms of travel. RVs or Recreational Vehicles travel is the cheapest form of travel in the US. The vehicles are modified as per your budget and when one travels on a Friday, one can see hundreds of RVs travelling all over the country. Every tourism destination has several camping sites and these vehicles are allowed to park there at a nominal fees ranging from 10 to 25 dollars. My daughter also decided that we should have some adventure and thus made a booking for a glamping site near Bear Lake, a huge lake several miles long and a picnic spot, nearly three hours drive from Salt Lake City. On a Friday afternoon, in US all picnic spots are crowded and Bear Lake was no exception. Thousands of people were milling around the Lake and we could not get a parking space till 3 pm! Anyway after enjoying the beach we decided to go around to the camping site where we were booked to stay in a Western style wagon, not cheap . A cool 300 dollars ! There were about 18 wagons placed around the camping site. The wagons were really nice and comfortable with 6 beds, ideal for a small family. The only problem was that one had to walk about 100 meters for bathrooms. Cool breeze, clear starry sky, open live fire and a guitarist to boot, the atmosphere was enchanting to say the least.
