Lonely Planet India unveiled first anniversary issue

After a year of bringing the best in travel, right from monks and snow leopards in Tibet to tribals in Japan and secret restaurants in New York to dragons in Slovenia, Lonely Planet launches one giant technicolor birthday cake of an issue to celebrate their first anniversary. Their aim was to bring in exotic summer destinations like Mexico and Arunachal Pradesh well in advance so that the readers have enough time to plan their trips.

In its mega huge issue, Lonely Planet promises its readers Mexico with its slightly bewildering history and utterly adorable and beautiful present and Arunachal, which has managed to absorb modern life while staying every bit as wild and lovely as ever. There's also Cape Town, a city that lives quite happily alongside penguins and seals, Spain's Moorish region of Andalusia, and further afield, mad, mysterious Belize, and Israel, holy but also a whole lot of fun.

The icing on the cake is the special 3D section (glasses included!), where they have shown some of their favourite images of the year in the sort of depth and colour one has never seen before (outside some very expensive Academy Award-winning movies). Lonely Planet challenges readers to walk down ruined forts in Mandu, make the perilous climb up Mt Everest and get totally queasy crossing rope bridges in Borneo ' and see if the experience of travel hasn't changed forever.

"It was our biggest launch. We invested a lot of resources behind it. This was because of our confidence in the magazine and our belief that the Indian traveller deserves a top-quality travel magazine tailored specifically to his needs. Twelve issues down, our beliefs have been justified. In just one year, Lonely Planet has become India's most preferred travel magazine. And possibly, the most successful magazine launch in the Indian market," said Tarun Rai, CEO, Worldwide Media.

"Lonely Planet Magazine India will continue to help people discover new places, as well as new things to do in the more familiar ones. Fittingly, our first anniversary issue gives readers the definitive Hot List of some fascinating destinations to visit this summer," he further added.

To top it all off, they have also issued fifty fantastic prizes up for grabs over the next 50 days, including luggage sets, cameras and domestic and international travel packages. All one needs to do is cut out and fill in the form, and a lucky dip will decide which prize is for the taking.

Today Lonely Planet publishes 500 titles covering every corner of the world in categories ranging from destination guides to general travel, including iconic titles such as the Lonely Planet Bluelist. It sells over 6.5 million books every year and is the UK market's leading guidebook publisher, with 365 professional authors covering a vast array of known and unknown places. www.lonelyplanet.com, with six foreign language versions, scores 49 million page impressions HOW OFTEN, with five million unique visitors every month. Lonely Planet has over 10 television series that are screened in over 150 countrie