Services & About

Cover: Big Bend National Park

Custom Trip Planning

There is a LOT of information online about pretty much any vacation you want to plan. At the end of the day, it is about your own style of planning (or not planning), your available time and inclination to research, how much of personalization do you need, are you the kind with lots of questions, your comfort level, concerns (are you the kind to take a broad plan and work details out on the trip or do you need to have it all in place before you leave?). Typically, it takes longer to plan a vacation than to go on it.

Who is it for?

- You have no time to research where to go for the holiday and want suggestions.
- You have no bandwidth to plan the holiday, or not comfortable doing it by yourself. You want a personalized itinerary, tips and advice and local guides in certain places. You want suggestions on any off-beat or side trips.
- You don’t like booking with travel agents and their standard tours. They might not charge you for the itinerary, but their overall costs are higher than doing it yourself and they will not spend the time to explore different possibilities.
- You have a lot of miles/points and would like to book the hotels and airlines with them and save costs. You want someone else to take care of the detailed trip planning.
- You are a little adventurous and open to exploring options that you may not have even heard about before.

I can help you with a range of needs – from a consult with a few questions to building a detailed day-to-day itinerary, customized to your time and interests.

What is the Service Offered?

- A curated and customized itinerary after an initial call to understand your interests and needs. See an example, Santa Fe (City) with the spreadsheet (you will be able to add any of your own edits and notes in it) OR a card style itinerary (both as shown).
- Help with picking guides, hotels/other stays, best times to visit, transport, a packing list, tips and side trips based on my own experience and research.
- Service fee will start from $100 (USD) and up and will be determined by nature of the request, type of itinerary and planning time.
- Contact Me for further details.

ABOUT ME

Travel and blogs….

While I have always wanted to write travel blogs from places I visited or lived in, I never had the time to do that when I was in a full-time job as a User Experience Designer. Now as I wind down in that space, I have more time to write and learn about social media. I am thankful to my dear son who has helped me so much with the back end of this website whenever I have had trouble! This blog writing is my fun outlet while re-living the old experiences and creating many more.

The moves…

There is a joy and anticipation when one starts to uncover the nuances of a new country, start to get into its life and rhythm and make it our own. It’s not merely about travel, it is the cultural and social experience of living in a different country. Aspects like finding a house, good school for the kids, new systems, experiencing the same soccer practices but a different way of parent involvement, new music teachers and styles, so on and so forth….. the colors of life so the same and yet so different, as we traverse continents.

I am always thankful for the opportunities to have lived and worked in the United States (home base), Australia, United Kingdom, Portugal and India. The experience of moving away from the familiar is both disruptive and exhilarating. I always wonder, “what’s next”…….One thing I know is to keep “Eyes Wide Open”, so as to not miss the magic out there!

My other likes are music, my coffee just right, photographs and old artifacts, a relaxing outing at any time, specially made better with my dearest friends, trying different vegetarian foods at restaurants, my mother’s cooking, and my father’s palate.

I hope my own travels will make it easy for others to quickly plan a trip or use it as a baseline for their own trip, saving hours of planning.

Thank you for your interest and being a supporter of this website! Do leave your comments on the blog pages you read.

— Jyothi Shankar

Jyothi’s on vegetarian restaurants in a local, Collin County, TX magazine:

tinyurl.com/TexMex-Plano Profile-Jyothi

https://tinyurl.com/Thai-Plano-Profile-J-Shankar

Contact me to contribute your writings.

Dr. Avantika Hasija, my dear niece, has just completed her post-doc work at the University of Lorraine, Nancy, France after having received her Ph.D in Chemistry in India.

She is set to start her new career in the UK. While doing her research work in France, she started with travels around Europe during weekends and holidays.

I am so happy and thankful to be collaborating her as she has recently grown her own travel wings and jumped in with the offer to make some Youtube and Instagram videos for me. She is also into trying new vegetarian and vegan options as she travels the world.

Want to see what new destinations I add each month?

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