The problem that guys face who don’t make it, like we didn’t make it, is that it’s hard not to sound like it’s sour grapes on your mind.

That said: I know one of the couples who were shortlisted, and I think they fully deserve it. I truly liked another application and I think they fully deserve it too. That these and some others I looked at randomly in the last week or so beat us, I am absolutely fine with. I wish them only the best.

I do not know Sapna B, though I know someone who got a stylish hairdo at her establishment. I have nothing against her. But that the application she submitted (https://greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/1247139038093751/) was selected is simply stunning.

Of course the jury owes nobody among the contestants an explanation for this. I wonder how they explain it to themselves.

All good wishes to all of you in the contest! I will of course hope that the two couples I mentioned above are among the three chosen for the drive, but whoever it is in the end, please have lots of fun and tell us some good tales. And that’s an order.

cheers,
dilip d’souza

https://greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/1246946775796126/

The contest holders always have to face controversies when it comes to selecting a handful. What we must respect as a contestant is the filtration process. When a jury is involved to eliminate bad/poor profiles, spam profiles, they strictly follow a set of rules such as IP tracking for individual accounts who try to play with the system.

Getting a 500-600 vote count in a day is suspicious, till you are not a celebrity. Yes and there are a few lucky ones who sometime get through.

We really look forward to get into top 9, Thanks to the Jury, and Thanks to the TGDC Team, and those who supported us.

@Sumit chill dude stuff happens….. if you are so desperate @Sandip please pull some strings and give him our slot in the top 100. As for why is Sapna on the top 100 well it was a wise decision by the jury. she is qualified to be here as much if not more than the rest of us. Lets see if you had a contest for best batsman and all of us had to do what we just did and Dada or maybe say Sachin(of tendulkar vintage) also applied but didnt try hard enough…. and then he got selected would you say shucks man why select him? It’s a batting competition silly….. the idea behind the blogging and social networking was to let the contestants introduce themselves to the jury and show consistency of calibre…. now if someone who is a proven pro at this comes up and says “me too” it’s actually a wise decision on the part of the jury to let them in and on the part of the rest of the contestants to accept the lateral entry. It’s like as I said earlier as well, the jury looks at the profiles and the effort that went into the pitch but it also would not work in a vacuum… proven track record of having sold copies of a magazine/newspaper/journal on the basis of her own writing/photography is ample amount of introduction for the jury to take a decision on who would be “good” for the marketting spiel once the top three cars start rolling….. and no this is not the end of the road for the rest of the 99 contestants… the competition just got tougher…. even Goliaths have been felled by Davids

@Rahul I assume you meant to say something about the route and destination everyone plans to take when you said something about renaming it to southIndia etc. Well it’s your own personal take on it but I do know a few contestants who plan on going towards Rajasthan, some towards Leh as well…. see south is easier from mumbai given the constraints of 300 to 350km a day… now if by any chance you meant to say anything about the origins of the top 100 well…. I for one am from Lucknow, my wife is from Kolkata….. saw a few from Delhi as well….. so dude you too need to chill…. and Sandip yaar isko bhi ek exchange seat if possible/he continues to be so angry types…. I don’t like to overtake unless the guy infront acknowledges and gives way and I most certainly do give way always coz you never know what emergency has befallen the guy who is driving@90kph on a 30kph speed limit flyover honking away…. shouldering my way in is not my style…. and yes one more thing I don’t like snapping at heels like a rabid dog once I’ve been overtaken on the road…. I am my own competition and if someone appreciates me for it great if not well no problem I never asked for recognition to begin with….. it’s much easier if you just sit back and think of all those friends you met up with and the organizing you did with your blogs/pictures etc. stuff you always wanted to do but never got motivated enough for….. That is your journey being better than the desitnation! That’s your take away from this competition….

I was pretty sure while opening the results page that our faces wont be there and I was still smiling coz I saw faces of people whom we had come to like a lot, specifically Abhijit and Vashishta two Ex army officers…. yeah I did get thru to Naval Academy(NDA) and then missed the boat because I did not have 6/6 vision since then I admire faujis for being the lucky ones! and I was very happy for a lot of the people… I was clicking randomly with no hope at all and suddenly saw my kids face and wow! I was happier but point remains that even if I had not gotten thru I would have been happy for my friends (in my head) and moved on to the next challenge, life! Yupp life, the biggest of them all challenges…... so guys who did not make it through no cause to be distressed and discouraged…. those who did make it thru are just going to have higher stress levels for a little longer than you… for you the agony is over and done with for us it’s gotten worse….

Hey all!

I’m sure all of u would agree that, irrespective of the end (of this phase), the means towards this end, is a hit! TGDC has achieved that.

After a long time in life, I had a mixture of so many feelings at the same time… fear, anxiety, nervousness, thrill, surprise, excitement, irritability, impatience, joy, love… all at the same time… WOW! We had made it!

In a reflection of the ‘high’ that we are feeling right now, as a tribute to this whole event in our life, we have ‘photo mosaic-ed’ the 100 finalist couples and the Cedia… and another one of the TGDC logo…

Download it at
http://www.waitforside.in

Hi Guys,

I dont know what to say.

I am amungst the top100 but my fellow contestant Ashish Arora is not. He had more votes than us, so do allow me to assure you that voting itself was not the sole criteria. I am really sad that Chandigarh has lost on contestant from the TGDC map, though I am really pleased that yet another Chandigarhian Gaurav Chhabra has made it.

However, like many others said, I would like to know my own scoring pattern emailed to me so that we can prepare ourselves to compete better by covering our weak points for the subsequent rounds.

I dont know what others are upto, I just have absolute faith in my abilities and the competence of my co-driver Paramjeet.

I am sure the jury would plug the holes for the future rounds.

Supreet and Paramjeet

Thank you all for sharing your feedback and concerns. This thread is now closed for comments.

Hi TGDC,

Thanks for sharing the criteria with us. I think, this helps to create a bit of transparency.

I was looking at the normal curves that you had posted before and the scoring of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 mentioned above against the 9 dimensions. To me, this probably is fair way of judging candidates.

Even though, I have no clue to what the relative weight was between these factors, I would like to say that this probably helps describe why ones with 100-200 votes made through. In your normal distribution, they would have probably been close to the mean - so chances are they would have bagged 30 on votes (just my guess). The reason they got through is ‘coz they probably excelled on any of the other 8 factors, bagging a 40 or a 50 on those - which is very fair, I guess.

What this scaling has done is to say that someone who managed to get 1000 votes was not 10 times better than someone who got 100 votes, even on the “Votes Performance” dimension - the difference between the two instead might have been of 50 points and 30 points (i.e. 1.7 times) - I am just making an observation, not defending any profile in particular.

Thanks,

Regards
Aditi and Anupam Mathur

Just one thing to add to the discussion on the results: are we not displaying a lack of sportsmanship? After all, when one enters a contest, one has to be prepared for both eventualities. Let’s be graceful—both in victory and defeat. It’s just a contest.

Hi guys ,
Congrats to all those who has made for the Top 100 ,  For the rest like me , make it up with your own plans for 3k kms and post it in your blog and make people wonder and feel for not selecting us .

Lets Cheers with the Top 100 as ONLY 1 day remain for the 91 % to join us

Cheers ,, have fun ,
Life is to enjoy all the way it takes us.

Well let bygones be bygones. We didnt make it to the top 100. we gave our possible best but maybe the best wasnt enough. Anyways,to the tp 100 - you people are lucky to be there. And may the best of you win. To the TGDC, well thanks. Have to admit grudgingly that the concept was great and unique and we really enjoyed our journey till this point. As we have already mentioned, the destination does not matter as much as the journey made. We have not let small aberrations matter   and dim our enthusiasm for travelling. neither will this setback do so. In fact it has awakened the enthusiasm for other components of travelling. like photography , blogs etc. So TGDC we will be back again next year with more zeal! So will be the other hundreds and it will be tougher for you the next time to select the 100 as you have started a revolution and all be better qualified and better prepared next year.

Hi Team GDC,

Presenting a big bouquet of my fav white roses for;
Giving us this new obsession
Criteria used for filtering applicants (it ain’t fool proof I see, but still u had one)
Overall GDC site’s look, usability & the Unique way of unveiling the top 100 (We’re under ‘C’ for CEDIA)
& this interractive Blog section

Yea we got thru!! the actual emotion was phew.. :-D
Thanks for ALLLLLL our friends who voted & wrote those precious, albeit few in no. testimonials, whatever happens we’ll always treasure them.
& all the best to the fellow contestants!!

We’ve been missing on this blog scene having spent every spare minute from work to complete our application & canvassing for votes (kinda glad coz at times it got nasty & what’s with the whole South Indian thing huh!). We weren’t very hopeful mind u, having started late & were pleasantly surprised.

As for the whole celebrity thing, after this fuss if such profiles still continues on to the next list..
Well..
I guess reading the comments that’ll evoke is going to make some read

I agree with the other participants on one thing, selected contestants score would make things a lot more transparent. Why not publish it?

Cheers guys,
Asha & Jo

As the saying goes “Easy Come Easy GO”. I do not mean to belittle anyone’s efforts but some of the competitors tried a lot harder than the others and I hope they were justly rewarded. Also there were some who came to a fork in the road in the competition, and took the path of the unrighteous. My feverent hope is that these competitors (rather particpants not competitors as competetion means sportsmanly conduct) did not come in the way of genuine competitors who tried their hardest to make the final cut. In my jaded view I think the competition was handled with the right amount of dignity and diligence, with a pinch of mystery that kept things alive and exciting. I doff my hat to all involved and hope for more to come.

Cheers,
Mav