Winning the Trip of a Lifetime - India, Here I come!

When my number one travel inspirer, Heather Hope sent me the email link for a contest called #YouWanderWePay, offering a free month of expense paid travel through India, I knew I had to jump on it.   Itching for a shake-up of my crazy NYC life for quite some time, yet too busy doing things I love to make it happen, I thought “wow, you better manifest this Chana….it has your name on it – and is exactly what you need!”  I did enough online sniffing to uncover a handful of favorable Trip Advisor reviews of the contest sponsor, India Someday, making me comfy enough to follow the instructions of writing a sentence about India and tagging 5 people on Facebook (if I had to tag 35, I probably wouldn’t have applied!)  

 I followed up with an email to India Someday to express a bit more enthusiasm for the potential of this dreamy adventure.  Ojas immediately got back to me and asked for some sample travel writings and photos.   I certainly have no lack of rambles about my rambles, and of course have some pretty compelling photos too. I sent them off to Ojas, hopped on my bike to work and felt myself glowing as if I had already won.   Once it got into my head, I was determined to make it happen… and never strayed from the possibility that I indeed could.  

“Spoiler Alert….Pack Your Bags….” read the email from Ojas, after a month of me devoting oodles of mental energy to making this dream come true.  I scrolled through the site a couple of times to make sure I read correctly and forwarded it to some friends to see what they thought.  I then dove into a much more intense web search to determine if this was actually legit (sorta felt like Ed McMahon came to my door and just told me I won the sweepstakes!)     I turned up a nice bunch of reviews and decided to contact someone who mentioned India Someday in a Huffington Post article.   She wrote back immediately, sharing passionately that her trip was amazing, I should definitely go and I should send her fondest regards to the team.  

Damn, this might ACTUALLY BE HAPENNING!  Who would believe?  A contest called You Wander We Pay! As if it literally had my name on it.

We had our first Skype call and I got to meet most of the India Someday team.   I had a great feeling about them, but to top it all off, at the end of the call, they mentioned they noticed we had a mutual friend on Facebook and asked if I was actually “friends” with Jeremy.  Curious about how THEY knew him, I was blown away to learn that India Someday had handled Jeremy and Gail’s honeymoon in India.   I of course immediately contacted them and received yet another glowing review.  When I told Jeremy that I won a crazy contest through the agency, he said “oh, I sent a link for that contest to Heather.”   What?  Really?  I’m often technology and social-media averse, but dang, it sure did work in my favor this time around. 

Thank you universe. 
Thank you Heather.
Thank you Jeremy.
Thank you India Someday
Thank you YouWanderWePay.  

India, here I come!

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