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Discover Iceland’s magic with Wego: Top attractions and undiscovered treasures
Residing in the heart of the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland is often called the Oasis of Peace, owing to its surreal landscapes. The island country is renowned for its panoramic views, massive mountains, and the elusive Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. The land is a plateau that is home to vast ice fields, live volcanoes, and naturally occurring hot springs.
An excursion to Iceland is an experience of a lifetime and a shared dream of many travel enthusiasts. To make the journey of these travellers more scenic and memorable, here are the top locations and hidden gems in Iceland.
Graenihryggur Ridge
The Graenihruggur-Green Ridge offers some of the best views of the landscapes in Iceland and leads to unique formations in the Lamdnannalaugar area, near the Central Highlands of the country. The striking emerald green-coloured ridge resembles a natural jewel and is a sight to behold. The trek of this site goes through a remarkably pristine and picturesque area. It is highly recommended to embark on the trek to this beautiful ridge and discover the extravagant beauty of Iceland.
Strútsfoss waterfall
The Strútsfoss is one of the tallest waterfalls in Iceland and is located along the Strutsa River. The Strútsfoss waterfall is off the beaten path and away from the crowded tourist trails. The magnificent waterfall cascades to the red strata in two levels. The first is 30 meters high, whereas the second falls from 100 meters above sea level. The flowing water, with the beautiful surrounding area, makes this site a magical experience. The best time to visit this is between April and October.
Reykjanes Peninsula Grindavik
The Grindavik region encapsulates dramatic surroundings, lava fields adjacent to the coast, and the renowned Blue Lagoon, offering endless possibilities to visitors. Sites such as Eldovorp, Selatangar, Gunnuhver, and the Reykjanes lighthouse add to the extraordinary beauty of the village of Grindavik. The village encounters seismic activity on a daily basis, experiencing more than ten earthquakes per day. However, the earthquakes are minor and measure only three on a Richter scale. Apart from this, the village is home to a community of 3000 residents.
Hrossaborg
Hrossaborg is located in Mývatnsöræfi, near the edge of the Highlands desert in Iceland. The crater looks out of this world with its distorted circular shape. It was formed 10,000 years ago due to the explosion of hot magma with cold groundwater. It was once used as a pen for horses, hence its name, Hrossaborg, which translates to Horse Castle.
Trollaskagi
Trollaskagi peninsula is one of the most popular towns for snow activities. It has the tallest mountain range in Iceland, exceeding 1500 metres in height, and offers a number of activities, such as skiing, snowmobiling, and snowboarding. The 200 glaciers in the peninsular region and the snow mountain cap last through May. The ski hike here begins from the mountain and ends on a black beach near the ocean. During the summers, the place becomes a paradise for hiking enthusiasts, as it has stunning hiking trails, and tourists can drive on the cliff looking over the ocean below.
A trip to Iceland is nothing short of visiting heaven itself. The breathtaking views, surreal landscapes, and the truly mesmerising Northern Lights make this place one of a kind. While there are many great popular locations to visit in the Island country, there are several hidden gems waiting to be explored. From majestic waterfalls and hot springs to hiking glaciers, Iceland offers endless opportunities for travellers to behold its natural beauty and connect to nature in the most surreal way possible.
The article has been authored by Wego general manager, India Bernard Corraya.
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
