It feels great to win

2010 is certainly off to a great start. Few days back a brand new Cannon IXUS 95IS was delivered to my office, which was a runner up prize in One for the Road Contest organized by CLAY.

I always enjoy organizing trips (more so when it involves self drive) and planning itinerary for the same. Its another story that 4 out 5 conceived trips never materialize (due to not enough people, budget constraints, not getting leave and other reasons)

Early December 2009, Club Mahindra Blog (CLAY) announced a contest wherein participants had to submit their itinerary for Bangalore-Ooty trip. This was very easy for me as we’d toured Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri last May. I managed to draft an itinerary based on our trip experience, improvise it a bit and submit it within deadline.

December last week I received a communication that I’ve won Runner Up place in this contest and I will be getting a Digital camera as my prize.

I liked the simplicity of this contest-All I had to do was prepare my entry and submit it, judges reviewed the entries and declared winners. I didn’t have to go around asking people to vote for me, nor there were any expectations that I blog about it, follow them in twitter or the likes. I was expecting an entry level or even unbranded Digital camera, but was delighted to receive a brand new Cannon IXUS 95IS, which retails at around Rs 9700 (Source: jjmehta.com)

A digital camera couldn’t have come at a better time, because I was seriously contemplating on a secondary camera which would fit into pocket, since my Sony DSC H50 is a bit bulky to carry around. Also our Olympus FE 170 was damaged after a fall and service center quoted Rs 3000 to fix it without any warranty as to how long it will last. A quick research had revealed that any decent branded camera will cost Rs 7000 upwards, as manufacturers have focused on increasing mega pixels instead of bringing down price.

Haven’t explored my new camera much, but it has favorable reviews on net and has standard features like 10MP sensor, 3x optical zoom, view finder and so on.

So where is the itinerary that you submitted?

It has been submitted to a contest and now its their discretion to either make it public or use it for internal purposes. I’m not disclosing it here as of now but it is largely based on (and improved upon) our Ooty trip travelogue.

Your chance to win:

I am given to understand that contest is still open for Northern circuits (Delhi-Corbett-Naukuchiatal-Binsar). If you have a useful itinerary to tour these places, you can submit your entry. Focus on following points: Where to stop for food/stay, time taken to travel/explore the place, road conditions, interesting places not to be missed and more).

I’ve been following CLAY since its inception. Arun Nair, Lakshmi Sharath and others have put lots of efforts and passion in giving it a great shape. (Of course backed by their company in terms of support and funding). CLAY is a good example of running a corporate blog without any direct sales pitch and focusing purely on quality content.

Possibly related: Mouthshut-where is my free airticket? * Sweepstakes gimmicks * SMS and win? * Club Mahindra Binsar resort review *