No matter where you’re planning to travel, a couple of English phrases will always come in handy. Consider your trip as an opportunity to practise your language skills! With 400 million speakers, chances are that someone will understand you. Bear in mind these questions that should be useful in most circumstances.

1. How much does the magazine cost? Whether you’re at the airport planning to buy magazine or snacks, or at a tourist spot about to buy souvenirs, asking for how much it would cost you is very important. Replace the word magazine with the word you might want to buy.

2. What time is it? Time zones can be confusing, so we recommend you to ask this question if you don’t miss your flight or your train ride!

3. How do I get to the park from here? When maps and smartphone apps fail to help you, asking a local for directions will always be a good option. Be sure to remember the directions (left, right, straight ahead). Don’t forget to note the landmarks! Do you turn left after the train station? Is it straight ahead or right next to the statue?

4. Where is the bank? If you’re looking for a bank, a restaurant or a hospital nearby, this question will surely be useful. Just replace the word with the place you are looking for!

5. Do you accept debit/credit cards? If you use a debit or credit card during your trips, it’s wise to ask this question before dining in a restaurant or purchasing souvenirs. Better have extra cash ready just in case!

6. Do you sell any maps here? If you’re looking for a specific item, this should be your go-to question.

7. Is this the line for the 7.30 PM bus? Don’t wait for thirty minutes only to find out you’re in the wrong line. Ask this question just to be sure!

8. Can you please take a picture of me? The most important souvenir any tourist or traveller can have is a selfie—and sometimes, you just have to ask someone to take this for you. Remember to say please and smile!

Vacations are all about relaxing your mind and body. It’s a good time when you take a break from all work or daily routine. This is your time when you are completely stressed free and embrace freedom. But vacations are also about eating local and street food. It is also about not following any sleep routine, so you end up partying and gossiping with your friends at night.

Mere change in routine lifestyle can bring havoc with your body, especially your digestive system.  Not giving your body a proper rest and exercise can instantly turn your fun vacation into a trouble vacation. To help you overcome some common health issued during your vacation and have a healthy vacation, we have put together some tips. Follow these tips when you are out for your next vacation trip and we are sure that you will return with some good travel memories and stories.

Keep your body hydrated

Most of us avoid drinking water while travelling as this will lead to frequent urination and finding toilets can be a big problem.  Dehydration can quickly lead to slight headache and lethargy. You may also face occasional constipation. Hence, consider carrying extra water bottles with you while you are travelling and once you are settled in your hotel/ hostels don’t hesitate to drink an extra glass of water after your meal.

Give your body rest to adjust the new atmosphere

It is very important to give your body some time to adjust the new atmosphere. For example, if you are travelling to Rajasthan from Mumbai during the winters. Your body will instantly react to the temperature and chances of falling down with fever or cold is more. Hence you must give your body rest for a day once reaching at your location. A proper sleep and meal will help you in that.

Follow a proper diet

Being on vacation is all about splurging into deserts and new dishes every day.  It is very easy for an individual to get over indulged and end up eating too much of those tempting dishes.  Try to keep your diet similar to what you follow when at home.  Or you could try to have a lite meal during the night if you had a grand meal at lunch.

Eat seasonal fruits

If you are a fitness freak person and prefer to avoid all tempting street food then, we have a tip for you, explore the local market and try the seasonal and local fruits. This will also help you stay fresh throughout the day plus help you to stay hydrated.

Limit alcohol consumption

We know it is hard to limit the alcohol intake especially when you are on your vacation. But adding unnecessary soda in your body will lead to its affect such as perspiring and morning hangovers.

Prefer walking for shorter distance

When on vacations, try to cover a shorter distance by walking rather than going by bike or car. Doing this will help you to digest your food and burn those extra calories.

Morning walks

Visiting and exploring the new place in the morning can be really exciting and healthy in a way. Try to head out for a morning walk or jog while you are on vacations to give your day an exciting kick start.

Find unique ways to work out

You can find your fitness routine anywhere without hitting the gym. You can use the stairs rather than lifts, grab your fruit juice and indulge yourself in some Zumba dance. You can find your own unique ways to stay fit while you are on your vacation.

Find your balance

Vacation is all about rejuvenating your body and mind. Make sure you achieve this by balancing your mind and body. And this is all possible when you take care of your diet and health.

Sanitize yourself

Tissue paper, wet wipes and sanitizers is going to be your savior if you are travelling during the time of COVID 19.  No matter where you are travelling, touching things will be constant throughout your trip from escalators, handrails to lift buttons, from door handles to exchanging cards or cash. You will end up touching one or other thing. Make sure you inculcate a habit of washing your hand and applying sanitizer frequently.

Having a well-maintained sanitized car is a must if you are planning for a road trip. These days many online car subscriptions offer sanitized cars at your doorstep.  All you must do is browse your car, pay the refundable security deposit. Your car is ready at your pick location, you can also return it anywhere across states.

Above were a few essential tips that will surely make your next vacation filled with health and enthusiasm.

Happy Driving

Photography could be just taking pictures for one or a life force for another. The other person here is a photographer. When you get behind a DSLR, the ordinary rules don’t apply to you. You have to create a vision for the world to see it through your lens. Your pictures should be snapshots of memories, speaking a thousand words. This art of painting with light is all about looking, re-looking, searching, creating and re-creating the world we live in.

Here are some photography tips to help you create that perfect picture!

1. Get Away From Automatic

Imagine yourself as a painter whose brush decides what colours he wants to fill in his image. How creatively constrained would that be? Absolutely same is the case with you as a photographer when using the automatic mode. Your camera is just an equipment, you are the one who has the vision. So don’t let the camera decide and take control. Having a DSLR and using the auto mode is just equal to having a point and shoot camera that gives better resolution pictures.

Now getting away from the auto mode also doesn’t mean that you stick to Manual all the time. You can use it most of the times, but also keep a check on other settings like Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority. These are super helpful in cases of emergency.

2. The Geeky Trio

Now to be able to use the manual mode, there are 3 most basic terms one should know about; Aperture, Shutter and ISO. All of these determine the amount of light (exposure) that goes in your sensor while creating an image.

Aperture: Simply put, aperture is a hole within a lens, through which light travels into the camera body. This determines the depth of field – the region of space in front of the camera that appears sharp . In photography, aperture is expressed in f-numbers or f-stops (for example f/5.6). In this image below, a large aperture of 2.8 is used to blur the background – only the flower is sharp, i.e. in focus.

Shutter Speed: It is responsible for creating dramatic effects by either freezing action or blurring motion. A camera shutter is a curtain in front of the camera sensor that stays closed until the camera fires. Shutter speeds are typically measured in fractions of a second, when they are under a second. For example 1/4 means a quarter of a second, while 1/250 means one two-hundred-and- fiftieth of a second or four milliseconds. This time is the time for which the lens was “looking” at the light in front of it. In the image below a really fast shutter has been used to capture the fast movement of the subject – albeit there is still motion blur.

ISO: ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to light, and vice versa. With a higher ISO comes an increased sensitivity which enables you to take pictures without flash even in low light conditions. But higher sensitivity comes at an expense – it adds grain or “noise” to the pictures. Hence, it’s always preferable to keep your ISO the least possible (i.e 100) to maintain the best quality. The image below was taken at 100 ISO on a bright, sunny day.

Other than these three main pillars of photography, if you manage to master white balance and focus, you’ll be mostly done with knowing the technicalities.

3. Composition

Now when clicking a picture, it’s extremely helpful when you know about certain composition and framing rules. The most important such rule is the Rule Of Thirds. This rule calls for you to divide your image in three equal parts and compose your image in thirds. This applies to both vertical and horizontal directions and vertical and horizontal compositions. The dominant subject matter in the photograph is placed one third up or down the image or one third from the left or right side of the image. This rule has been applied in the picture below with the bird.

Odd number of subjects, creating contrasts through colour, sizes, leading lines, anything and everything that creates drama in your image and makes it interesting is important and should be kept in mind while composing.

4. Let YouTube Be Your Senpai

YouTube is a hub of tutorials that can be life changing for you as a photographer. Most of the photography courses in town are pretty expensive and can be heavy on your pocket. I am definitely not denying the fact that they are helpful but I can’t assure you their worth when there are some superb photographers teaching on YouTube for free. Adorama TV and Bryan Peterson’s channel are worth looking into.

Other than YouTube, be very active on social networking platforms like Flickr, 500px, Pinterest and download photography applications. It’ll be inspirational for you to see works of wonderful photographers and help you share your works and get reviews.

5. Get Creative With Editing

Consider using a program like Picasa or Photoscape to edit if you are new to editing, nothing can beat Photoshop though. It will allow you to crop, colour- correct, adjust exposure, remove red-eye, and perform other basic editing tasks. Performing some very basic editing on a photo helps to improve its quality drastically. Cropping a bit can help with composition, and you can also rotate a photo so that horizon lines are straight. Getting your photos right in-camera is the larger goal, but there’s no harm in a bit of retouching.

6. Practice

Practising is the key to success for anything and everything so click as much as possible. Give everything a new meaning and spend hours with your camera until you fall in love with it. Give yourself weekly assignments and try techniques regularly.

The best part of having a hobby like photography is never running out of things to learn. Inspiration is all around you. Look at everything with the eyes of a photographer and you’ll see opportunities you never noticed before.

7. Experiment And Explore

Now this one tip is the most important of all. If you’re a photographer, you ought to be an explorer. You ought to have that wanderlust that differs you from the others. You ought to have the urge to capture the world through your camera and be able to deliver that emotion you clicked that one image with, to a person who looks at it after ten years. Experiment with all your camera settings and exploit them. Try all sorts of photography. Don’t think twice before trying a new mode or over exposing an image. After all, no art has a defined set of rules.

Once my wise photography teacher said “technicalities and expensive cameras matter only thirty percent when you take a picture; it is your vision of looking at the same thing that matters the most”. Smartphone photography is proof that an inferior camera can take excellent shots as well.

A picture is one of the most powerful means of expressing oneself. There is definitely a photographer in you too, unleash your creative abilities and explore yourself and the world around. Look, observe, compose , frame and click.