Winners of The GoUNESCO Challenge 2013

Yet another successful year of The GoUNESCO Challenge is over and we have the winners for this year!

In addition to the India Challenge, GoUNESCO went global this year�with The Epic Challenge, a lifetime challenge of visiting every world heritage site in the world. Hundreds of travelers, heritage and culture enthusiasts from around the world have joined this challenge and shared their travel stories from around the world. It is very encouraging to see the enthusiasm and I hope this will only grow in the future!

The GoUNESCO India 2013 Challenge had both Western Ghats (added to world heritage list in 2012) and Hill Forts of Rajasthan (added in 2013) included this year. This took the total number of available points to 3000 (30 sites). However, a devastating flood in Uttarakhand meant that it was practically impossible to visit the world heritage site of Nandadevi and Valley of Flowers.

Winners – GoUNESCO India 2013 Challenge

This year, we have a tie in the India Challenge with two winners – Parul Sharma and Ajay Saxena. They earned the same number of points – 2400, which means they visited 24 world heritage sites in India. An interesting tidbit about the winners is that they are a married couple (which probably explains the same number of points :)). Coincidentally, Parul is an architect too (last years winner Jai Bharathi is an architect too!) The runner up, Nishant Chawla lives in Pune and is a manager in an engineering firm there.

Leaders – The Epic Challenge – 2013

As The Epic Challenge is impossible to complete within an year, we will announce the leaders at the end of every year until we have a winner.

Gary Arndt, the world famous travel photographer is a clear leader this year with 26300 points, that’s a whopping 263 world heritage sites! He has actually visited 264 world heritage sites, but one of them (Dresden) is no more on the world heritage list. Clyde Triganza of Malta is the runner up with 17000 points and Anne-Sophie Redisch from Norway is the second runner up with 6000 points. It is interesting to note that Anne-Sophie is a mom and travels with her daughters most times.

The GoUNESCO India 2014 starts from today, join now and start on your travel story!