Paharika is an innovative and community-driven travel guide web application focused on exploring the beauty of North Bengal. It not only helps users discover popular destinations but also enables them
Paharika is a travel-based web application developed during Hack4Bengal, specially designed to promote tourism in North Bengal. The platform allows travelers to plan personalized trips using AI, explore popular and hidden destinations, connect with fellow travelers, share their travel memories, and even book verified local guides — all in a secure and engaging environment. We also added an emergency support system that shows nearby hospitals and police stations using real-time maps, prioritizing traveler safety.
The idea behind Paharika is to blend technology with local tourism, creating opportunities for both travelers and local communities.
We would also like to thank the AI tools and platforms that supported our journey — including ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot — for helping us brainstorm, debug, write content, and speed up the overall development process. Their support acted like an extended part of our team throughout this hackathon.
Participating in Hack4Bengal was our first hackathon, and it turned into an incredible experience filled with learning, teamwork, and growth. While building Paharika, we faced real technical challenges. One major issue was API fetching and integration. Initially, it worked as expected during local development. However, during the hosting phase, we faced several deployment conflicts, especially related to API limits and CORS issues. To ensure smooth hosting, we had to temporarily remove API features and JavaScript-based logic from GitHub. We also had some exciting features in mind, such as: ✅ Complete integration of real-time AI travel suggestions, ✅ User authentication: users must create an account before posting blogs, videos, or photos, ✅ Saved trip history to access previous plans anytime, ✅ Advanced community-matching algorithms for connecting with fellow travelers based on interests, ✅ A GPS-based emergency system that, with a single click, shows nearby hospitals and police stations on the map — including directions, contact details, and current distance from the user’s location. Due to time constraints, some of these features couldn’t be fully implemented during the hackathon. But we are committed to developing them further after the event to make Paharika a complete and powerful travel assistant. This project gave us industry-level exposure to version control systems like Git and GitHub, taught us about collaborative teamwork, bug fixing, and how to divide tasks efficiently across different domains like frontend, UI/UX, and logic development. It truly felt like working on a real-world project.