By Sangay Rabten
As a young lady of 28 and surrendering apartment in Thimphu, currently staying in Gelephu helping her parents in doing manual work and working equally with laborers, Tshering Denkar chosed her own destiny even leaving behind the job offer. She has Masters in Tourism Management from Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand. She realized her dream and passion of traveling and climbing the mountains. For this, she started traveling and blogging.
Despite women in general, feel insecure to travel lonely, Tshering Denkar is courageous enough to travel alone. She is a solo traveler looking for the historical and natural description of the places she visits. She said, “I am a wanderer with gypsy soul and my heart’s hard calling for hiking up on the mountain and love for traveling, I have started traveling and blogging.” She said that she like to go to new places and even to familiar places to rediscover. This is with the aim to experiences incredible sojourn and shares the experiences through blogging.
The other reason for her blogging is that our Drukyul has so much to offer with abundance natural resources, rich culture and heritage. But she noticed that Bhutanese go for vacation to Bangkok saying they love concert jungle which sounds cliché. Tshering Denkar told, “I believe that the perfect gateway may not take you far from home but you can choose a place that you have never visited before.”
Blogging has become first of its kind in Bhutan which is arm chair and part time blogging. Tshering Denkar wanted to explore more of local destination on full time passion to profession of blogging to shareadventures and mini holiday destinations to public. Traveling constantly and sharing photographs in social media inspired her more where it helped her to recover from depression and anxiety. Since then she became more committed to invest in blogging.
Though there are not many people reading her travel blog, she has broadened her niche for visual lover by doing Vlog in YouTube. Tshering Denkar blog about places sharing her personal narratives of destination, food and aspire tourists to meet their expectation when they are in Bhutan. She gives genuine review of places, hotels and fun activities of places she visits.
Some tours company misunderstands her thinking as competitor. Here, she said, “One should know that travel bloggers are like a bridge to tour operators and aspiring traveller.” She also added that people got to understand travel bloggers help to grow and promote places more digitally. She shared her views that stakeholders in tourism industry should take travel bloggers into consideration.
Talking about sustainability and investment required in blogging, she tells that more than money, one should invest time. To satisfy image resolution when shared outside Bhutan, she instructed to have one good camera when she gave talk to the students of Motithang Higher Secondary School. However to sustain work, she earns little by writing articles to few travel agencies.
She faces the challenges of being woman about safety and security though nothing has happened till now. The most notable challenges the blogger faces is that Bhutanese people doesn’t share their blog to help to promote their work. “I don’t understand why people wouldn’t share or help to promote Bhutanese Blogger, where as a month ago, American travel blogger in Bhutan was shared by hundreds of Bhutanese, “she said. It’s worrisome how local blogger can boom when they doesn’t receive much help from the audience.
Tshering Denkar is inspired by her family encouragement and good feedbacks from the followers. She expressed, “Family is backbone of my blogging sojourn.” Her parents and sister have supported lot in her blogging.
Tshering Denkar‘s blog is local centric giving hike up of mountains, rivers, temples, holiday places within Bhutan. She said, “Someday I hope to become an ‘influencer marketer’ in travel industry. As a blogger she will continue to promote destination and is pessimistic of brighter future for travel blogger.
YouTube at Denkars Getaway
Blog Denkars Getaway