Those hot hot days!

The two days in Grand Canyon were extremely tiring. For September, the heat was scorching, with the temperatures going up to 100 degrees around noon. Because the area is a desert, the weather is in the extremes. Late nights and early mornings are cold, and you need to wear a jacket. But around noon, even stripping down to your undies doesn't help!

We stayed in a youth hostel at Flagstaff, a small town about 2 hours drive from the canyon. It is about the closest you can live to the canyon if you are traveling on a budget. If you are ready to shell out more, then you can stay in the one of the lodges on the canyon and enjoy the sunrise/sunset from your room. Visitors are allowed to hike freely during the day, but for camping and overnight hikes you need a permit, for which you may have to apply a few months in advance.

We didn't have a permit, so we did two different day hikes. We realized the real worth of the permit when we had to miss out on going down to the Colorado river. It takes 4-5 hours to get down to the river, depending on the time of the day and your experience as a hiker, but it takes much longer to get back. It is also recommended that you don't hike for 2-3 hours around noon, because the heat can be deadly. So you really need 2 days for hiking and one night to camp to be able to enjoy the river.

Both our hikes started around 2pm as we went down the gorge, and both the days we were lucky to view amazing sunsets while returning. The gorge is very steep so it's tricky to figure out how much you should really descend, because an hour of walking downhill can mean 3-4 hours of hiking while coming back up. We went at a leisurely pace, not rushing ourselves, and that really is the way to enjoy the canyon. You need some time to take in the grandeur and the vastness of the place, and I was just dwarfed by a feeling of nothingness. It definitely does put into perspective your place in the universe - a tiny tiny speck!!

Grand Canyon!

I made this trip last September - a trip to arguably one of the most visited places in the world. I'm sure my amateurish pictures cannot do justice to the grandeur of the scenery, especially when it has been so well documented by photographers.

Grand Canyon is in Arizona, in the middle of a huge desert. When making the drive, it takes you somewhat by surprise, because you don't expect such an immense gorge to appear suddenly in the middle of a vast flatland. And boy what a gorge - it is more than 1 mile deep at it's deepest point, where Colorado river flows. The river creates some of the best rapids going through the canyon.

I went with three friends from undergrad - all of us flew from the east coast of US and Canada. We spent 2 days in the canyon, and that was about all we could take of the heat and the repetitive scenery. I mean, it is beautiful, but no matter where you trek, the topology and the views are pretty much the same. And for 4 bachelors to return from grand canyon without a visit to Las Vegas (3 hours drive from GC), would have been an insult to our bachelorhood :)

I will write a bit more in detail about the treks in subsequent posts. The Vegas trip goes undocumented because as the saying goes - what happens in Vegas, doesn't get published online!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ...

That's the song all over southeast America today!! In my 3 years in Atlanta, it is the first snowfall that I have seen, and boy, was it beautiful! Magical is the word really. I'm sure my friends up north don't consider it a big deal, but that's because when it starts snowing in the north east, it does not stop until April. But in Atlanta, knowing the fact that it is going to stay only for a couple of hours makes the experience much more enchanting.

Meanwhile, the year has been off to a great start with a lot of trips lined up. If everything goes as planned, then there is some international travel (South America may be??), some trips within the US, and a lot of exploration of India that is on the cards.

Though this is coming a little late, I wish everybody a great 2008, blessed with tons and tons of travel, adventure, time with family and loved ones, and moments that fulfill your destiny!

Glimpses: Medieval Europe

Some glimpses from the older part of Switzerland. The first one is from inside Chateua de Chillon at Montreux - a french castle in the southern part of the country (adjoining France). The castle itself was good but not all that impressive - perhaps having seen monuments of great architectural grandeur constructed by the Mughals in India, I was expecting more. But the views from inside the castle were breathtaking. The castle opened out to a lake on 3 sides, and the alps can be seen in the backdrop.

The rest of the images are from the old part of Zurich. While most of the old houses in the area have been converted into restaurants and cafes (pic 2), there were still some residential homes in the area. And who can take a walk in old Europe without feeling awed by the medieval churches. The good thing about Zurich is the co-existence of the old and the new. The extremely cosmopolitan area near the main train station with all the banks and the malls etc., is just a stone's throw away from the oldest part of the town. They haven't allowed the history to rot in some forgotten section of the town. And that's something that we could take a lesson from in India :)

Jung Frau Joch

Some pics from the highest peak in Europe. It's been a fun weekend, and though I promised I would write a lot more, I'm just going to sign-off with those pictures, and atleast keep my promise of having written here at all!

BTW, that trek was awesome - around 4 hours of breathtaking views. If you go there, make sure you walk some part of the distance - the train goes to the very top!

Backcountry Switzerland

After postponing for months and months, I'm back to clearing my backlog on writing about my India/Swiss trip this summer. I spent one week in Switzerland before continuing on to India for 4 weeks. Even though 1 week wasn't quit enough to explore the whole country, it was just enough to get a taste of life in one of the most visited tourist destinations in Europe (and unfortunately, one of the most expensive ones too!!).

The swiss are known for their pride in the way they decorate their houses, the technical and artistic exquisiteness of their watches, their chocolates (especially dark chocs), and last but not the least, their finely cut suits and dresses. All of the above traits are visible all over the country - be it the extremely cosmopolital Zurich, or the backcountry in Luzern, Bern or any of the older towns. The country is very well connected through a public transport system consisting of trams, buses, railways, cable cars, and boat rides! A travel pass entitles you to all the above listed means of transport, and considering the amount of money we have to pay for public transport in the US, it is really very economical. The best way to explore the country is to get a 1 week travel pass, trek in the back country during the day, and come back to a bigger city like Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva etc. at night. I spent one night in a youth hostel in Zurich, and the remaining 4 days with a friend who goes to school in Lausanne. The major touristy area is Interlaken - and it is so with good reason. The highest and the most beautiful mountains of Europe are in this area, with Jung Frau Joch touching around 4700m. The swiss have done a great job of promoting tourism in the area - there's a train that goes upto around 3600m from where you get perfect views to Jung Frau peak!! I did a trek down from that height, and it was nothing short of amazing. The mountains in the area are lush green, and it seems like they are being taken care of by gardeners coz the grass is almost evenly cut all over the region.

Above are some pics from my trek in the countryside in Luzern (about 1 hr from Zurich), and will post the pics from Jung Frau in my next posting.

North Georgia Mountains!

It already seems like ages since I made any trips (and the India trip was just a month back!!). The routine of life has taken over so quickly, that all the resolutions I made about changing my outlook towards life - all the richness of experiences that moved me while traveling, have been almost forgotten. I guess that's why all the explorers and adventurers have this almost physical urge to get out of their normal routine life and travel. And I guess that's what's described as travel lust in the dictionaries :)

Well last week I was seized by travel lust once again, and off I was with a bunch of friends and family. After traveling alone to Switzerland and India for more than a month, this was a pleasant change. There was 12 of us as we headed towards the mountains of north Georgia/southern Tennessee for a weekend of camping and river rafting.

Being such a large group, and of course all of us being Indians, it was almost impossible to have started at the time that we originally fixed for our departure!! I guess we Indians have a decent workaround this problem - just stipulate the time for around an hour or so earlier than you actually intend to leave, and everbody's happy. The amazing thing is that in spite of us being 12 people, I think all of us got ready around the same time (being equally late by more than an hour), thereby confirming the fact that the concept of IST (Indian Stretchable Time) works out very well if the group is all Indian. If you have even a single non-Indian in the group, well, then they have to learn the lesson the hard way by waiting up :)

Anyways, it was a nice pleasant evening drive up the hills - which are somehow not the part of the Smokey mountain range but are geographically located very close to them, as to the famous Applachian trail (that runs from Georgia in the south to Maine in Boston in the north - look up the map for east coast of the US). We reached the campsite at around 9pm - when most of the other campers in the area had already BBQ'd and were putting out fires and getting ready to sleep, we were putting up our tents, and looking for firewood for cooking :-D. Somehow we got done with dinner by midnight (and we already had a ranger give us a warning about making too much noise). That's when someone(*) had the brilliant idea of telling ghost stories to each other. All of us gathered around 2 candles in one tent, and slowly but surely the stories started pouring out. By around 2:30 am, all the brave souls in the tent could be given a shock treatment by the
sound of the wind against the leaves, or someone's palms against the tent, or even a cockroach walking blissfully on the tent unaware of the effect it was creating (that was me who woke up at 4am and figured it was a cockroach and not some blood-thirsty vampire lol).

Somehow everybody made it through the night - ALIVE, and it was time for some adventure. We started with a game of volleyball, which soon became so rowdy that we had to end it at one game apiece. We left for Ocoee river after that for an afternoon of river rafting. Having done rafting on the Ganga in India, I wasn't very excited about rafting in the US, as I had been told that the rapids on the Ganga are some of the best in the World. I was pleasantly surprised with the rapids on Ocoee, and also with our raft guide, who made sure we had fun being absolutely drenched! And I, the only one who had some rafting experience in our raft, was the only one who fell into the water while we were traversing one of the rapids. The coolest thing was that someone was clicking pictures from the bank when I fell into the water, so I have an almost slow-motion record of my fall in the water (and I also know who all in the raft tried to help me, and who all were laughing their asses off!!). I'll post those pictures in an update to this post.

All in all, excellent trip - the best kind of fun that you can get in the US (with all the concerns for safety surrounding EVERYTHING adventure related).

(*) That someone's my Bhabhi (brother's wife), but I didn't want to take names in the middle of the blog :-D. But I guess that was one of the best ideas of the trip for the amount of fun we had coz of it - in spite of the shivers!!