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Home Page of the Off-season Travelers in India

Why would Julie and Marcus Longmuir go to India from June to September, 2003?

Welcome to our Off-season Travelers (OST) homepage, where we have documented our trip to India during the summer of 2003. The OS travelers are Julie and Marcus Longmuir and we were both fortunate enough to have employers willing to let us take leaves of absence for the summer. Julie was going to Calcutta as an exchange student at the Indian Institute of Management. As Marcus had always wanted to go to India, we decided to make the trip a shared experience.

Overview of the OST website

There were three distinct aspects to our summer trip. The first was a typical (though off-season) two-week long tourist trip in the North of India. Then there was the three months Julie spent at the IIMC and finally there were the 6 weeks that Marcus had to do whatever he could in the Calcutta area and ramble on about what he saw. The site is a blend of writings and photographs from these three trips.

Editors' note: January 24, 2004. We've finally uploaded all the IIMC pages I (Julie) put together as well as the rest of the missing pages from our 2 week vacation. In essence, the India site is now complete. We hope you enjoy it! We also added a Life after India page, with pictures from our NYC adventures from September - December 2003. It's now January and I have my very last final exam two days from now on Tuesday. After that, I'll finally be done with my MBA. I want to thank all my friends and family for their support!

Love, Julie and Marcus

A note about the site design

Photographs, 360° Panoramics and videos.

Most of our travels were by road and throughout our trip we saw a huge amount of what we are going to call 'Truck Art.' According to our helpful driver Sanju, there are government requirements that lorries and buses must have certain things written on them such as 'Horn Please' and 'Keep Distance.' The government does not provide any preformatted stickers but does certify truck artists to paint the trucks using officially approved colours and fonts. We think these truck artists are quite creative in their blending of official colours and additions of graphics.

As is the case with a number of cultural differences, the locals were intrigued by the fact that we thought this 'art' was interesting; after all, in India all trucks are like that, so what is so special? To us the look was so unique to India that we decided to incorporate it into the design of our website, therefore, each section has a special 'Truck Art' theme at the top of the page.

The following picture is an example of truck art; click on the picture of the truck to see an enlarged version.

The majority of OST photgraphs are static but you can always click on them to open an enlarged version of the small image (then use your browser's back button to return to the site). Occasionally you will come across 360 degree photographs which will always indicate that an image is loading. By using your mouse to click and drag the photograph to the left or the right, you can turn around as if you were in India with us. This nifty viewing method was developed by Jeremy Childs, who asks only that we give him recognition by linking to his PanaView website.

At times you will also see videos. Sometimes these videos will be part of the page, at other times you will have to click on a link to open the video file.

We were able to do all three types of photgraphs using only one tiny camera. The Canon S330. It comes with software that allows us to stich pictures together to create panoramics and has the capacity to record up to 30 seconds of video, with sound.