20/09/2024
Enabling those who can't walk to travel the world.
Recalling one of the most humbling moments from our recent VR stall for Kerala Tourism at the Literature Festival held on Kozhikode. While the VR content brought a lot of smiles to the faces of the avid book readers and curious young minds at the festival, nothing compared to the joy we encountered with one special visitor. He was a quadriplegic tourist from Europe who had been travelling across Kerala with his brother. Wherever his trusted wheelchair could not take him, his brother carried him and tried to show him as much of each place as possible. Wearing the VR headset suddenly gave him a version of India that he had never had the pleasure of seeing before. Parasailing over pristine beaches, riding speedboats and canoes in the inland waterways, trekking though the tropical forests, scuba diving deep in the Indian Ocean, the list of the adventures he had over a matter of a few minutes goes on. When we removed the headset to reveal his beaming smile and listen to his raving review of what he had seen, we were once again reminded of the reason why we do what we do and the immense potential that this new cutting edge medium holds to make our world a better place.