Getting away this summer
Interresa
This Canadian site provides access to over 700 airlines and 850 hotels worldwide and has the facility for making bookings for these right online. Its efficient search engine enables you to find an airline or airport from the city code or name. The site is packed with utilities for the traveller. There are multilingual dictionaries, health-related information, maps, travel guides, temperature charts, and currency converters which give you instant and current conversions of 70 currencies. And if you�re interested in travel trivia, there is a whole section devoted to that, telling you things like the biggest waiting room in the world is located in Beijing�s (China) railway station, which can hold 14,000 travellers, or that the longest train platform measuring 833 metres, is located in Kharagpur, India.
TravelMart India
This newly-launched site claims to be India�s first e-commerce travel portal. Claims aside, you can certainly making your air bookings from here. You fill in your departure and arrival cities in the form and you will be presented with the flight options closest to your requested itinerary. After you select your flight you fill in your credit card details (Visa, MasterCard or American Express). It takes two to four days for the tickets to be couriered to you, so if you�re thinking of last minute flights, the site �kindly� advises you �to check at the airport airline counter directly.� Add-ons at the site are provided through sundry alliances. Thus, the World Guide section links to Lonely Planet, Flight Info goes to Amadeus and the travel news update is �through our agreements with Reuters.� Big names all. The currency converter is a useful gizmo here.
Trip Prep - Travellers health
One thing you just wouldn�t want when on a holiday is to fall ill. A site which caters particularly to travellers� health is Travel Health Online. Here you can review a country profile to check out what ailments could attack you in that particular country (220 countries are listed from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe). Then, there are sections which talk of general travel-health concerns, preventive medications and vaccines, and outbreaks of new diseases in any country. Don�t miss out the warnings about crime, as this is also an affliction to our race. Good reference material is available in the sections covering summaries of travel illnesses and official health data published by organisations like the WHO and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
India Travelog
This is one in the clutch of sites which recently changed hands for a whopping Rs 500 crore. The site has been built up over the last five years and is a comprehensive storehouse of travel info on India. The fact files here cover almost every Indian state and worth-while travel destination within the country. Read about what folk who have �been there, done that� have to say as they give their impressions about the mountains, plains, jungles, towns and villages of the colourful Indian tapestry. Then delve into the realms of adventure travel like scuba diving, trekking, river rafting, rock climbing and hang gliding. If you�d rather join a tour party, check out some exciting packages � including summertime getaways to the Himalayas � which you can book online.
World Time
If you�re planning a globe-trotting holiday, this German site, World Time, will certainly come in handy to tell you what time you will be where. Just click on a country on the interactive map here and you can view actual time, sunrise and sunset times and holiday info of that particular country. These details are available for 550 cities and towns around the world. You can zoom in and out of the map, choosing to view national borders, stars, and latitude and longitude lines. The public holiday list will be useful for travellers and people doing business abroad as they can be prepared for the restrictions of public life. With our innumerable public holidays, a traveller to India can certainly benefit from this feature, which even indicates the states in which the holidays are celebrated
Away.com
This site formerly went under the name Green Travel, but has now gone beyond green to provide you with all the colours of the world � azure skies, turquoise waters, stark deserts and brilliant white snows. It aims to provide a complete online resource for the seasoned, adventurous traveller who goes beyond being merely a tourist. So take your pick from the depths the Gulf of Thailand, where you take in the underwater spectacles, to the Himalayan heights where you can trek or go mountain-climbing. Then you can plunge into culinary tours or archaeological digs. There are thousands of extraordinary adventures to be found in the site�s database, where you can search by region, country and activity (beaches, bird-watching, wind-surfing, cruises, etc). So if you�re out to do something different this summer, get thee to Away.com.
Contact: Manuel Fernandes
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Updated 9/May/2000