War and Peace

Ok, so I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 on Friday. But this is not going be what you think it will be, it is not a movie review. It is a narration of how my perception of the armed forces and war underwent a 180 degree change. Not that anyone wants to know... but anyway, that's not going to stop me now is it?... :-)

I was a firm believer in the spirit of the armed forces: the heroism of serving your country, being ready to give up your life for your nation, the pride when you wear the smart uniform! A lot of this attitude has to do with my NCC (National Cadet Corps - the student wing of the Armed Forces in India) experiences, NCC Army in school and NCC Navy in college. I even tried out to be a Pilot for the Indian Air Force (I failed the third round aptitude test).

But as I was watching Fahrenheit 9/11, I realized that I no longer supported the idea of war or of the armed forces. It's not that the movie changed my opinion, but the movie made me realize it. Nothing, NOTHING is worth taking away another human being's life. We do not have the power to give life to a person, what right do we have to take it away?? You ask "So do we sit and watch while the enemy invades us and takes innocent lives?". Frankly, I don't know the answer to that. A few years ago, I would have said "Absolutely not! We need to fight back!". But now, it seems like such a waste. So now, innocent people from the enemy camp also die in addition! What good can that possibly do?! It will only increase bitterness on both sides! A war can never lead to a resolution (although it may seem that way). It only exacerbates the already existing tension between the warring factions.

The soldiers at war are not to blame, they are not the ones that made the decision to go to war. It's the people sitting in plush offices and don't have sons in the Forces that make these exciting decisions. Solutions? Attitude change, we need to get out of the mindset that we can find peace by brute force or by crushing a delinquent country. The important thing there is that we ALL need a change in our psyche. It won't do if one country expects the world to ban the use of nuclear weapons while she herself continues to boost her nuclear strengths. Is anyone listening?


PS- The movie is definitely worth watching, double thumbs up from me!

Word Game Answers

After being thrilled to bits by the overwhelming response to the Word Games, and knowing that you are all dying to find out the answers, I will put them up now. (The true reason being 1.I am too bored to think of anything else to write and 2. I guess no one is going to try after so long!)

1. Name the country that has all the vowels in its name.

Ans: MOZAMBIQUE

2. A word(s) that has all vowels, occuring in the right order

Ans: FACETIOUS, ABSTEMIOUS. Full points to Krish! ( I had facetious, but google comes up with many more).

3. What's special about this group of words?: facade, cab, bead, deaf, ace

Ans: They are all made from letters in HEXADECIMAL :D That's for the geeky wordgame maniacs!

4. RHYME TIME

Comfortable insect: SNUG BUG

Wet tents: DAMP CAMP

Wonderful film: GROOVY MOVIE

5. Kangaroo words:

Precipitation : RAIN
Facade: FACE
Appropriate: APT
Salvage: SAVE
Indolent: IDLE

6. Anagrams

morse heap: SEMAPHORE
lace bed: DEBACLE

What's in a name?!

Let's start with my most famous namesake, Rukmini Devi Arundale. She is widely known as the founder of Kalakshetra, the renowned school of classical Indian performing arts, situated in Madras. But I found out recently that Rukmini was in fact called upon to be President of India, by the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai! She declined the invitation, prefering to confine herself to the Arts and stay out of the political realm. Many attribute the revival and popularization of Bharatnatyam to her, but that is debatable. But no one questions her great talent in Bharatnatyam or her contribution to the art form. Incidentally, this year marks the birth centenary celebration of Rukmini Devi Arundale.

All that said, the greatest Rukmini I have known is my late maternal grandmother, after whom I am named. She was a pillar of strength for our family. Married at age 14, she bore all the responsibilities of nurturing her family and other's families too! Always smiling and hospitable, she kept her home and all our hearts happy! And her cooking...whoa! Let's just say that we always over-ate at Paati's*. She was going to make mysore pak** for me when I went to India for my sister's wedding. But it turned out that I would never eat her mysore pak again....she passed away 4 days before the wedding. Well, it was a peaceful passing and the way my mother(an amazing woman herself!) looks at it, we have so many lessons to learn from Paati's life. And we will always feel her presence in everything we do! And as my Thatha*** says, I am the Rukmini to take her place now! :-) Hmm, now that's a hard act to follow.

* Paati = Grandmother
** mysore pak = Indian sweet made with gram flour and sugar
*** Thatha = Grandfather

Words' Worth

Ok, people, I have always had a fancy for Word Games. We used to fiddle with anagrams during free time in high school and my sister and I did the Anagrams section of Indian Express every Sunday. So here are a few puzzlers (don't google them!), some I thought of, some I remembered from competitions in school:

1. Name the country that has all the vowels in its name.

2. A word(s) that has all vowels, occuring in the right order

3. What's special about this group of words?: facade, cab, bead, deaf, ace

4. RHYME TIME

- Use the clues to find the two words that rhyme.

Eg. Path Frog: ROAD TOAD

Comfortable insect: ---- ---

Wet tents: ---- ----

Wonderful film: ------ -----

5. Kangaroo words:

Easy ones. Find smaller words(in the order they occur) within these words that mean the same as the bigger word.

Eg. Observe: See

Precipitation
Facade
Appropriate
Salvage
Indolent

6. Let's finish with some of my own anagrams (each is a single word):

MORSE HEAP
LACE BED

Lunch time's over, answers later!

Sister Act

I read my sister's blog today. She told me yesterday that she started one, and I was curious to see what she had put in there. I was pleasantly surprised to see something about me. I am moved and touched (and believe me, with my sister, it's rare to hear senti things!). And all I want to say is "To the best big sister in the world, you rule! I will always look up to you and come to you for advice(or just to bug you)". Oh wait...on second thoughts, I don't think I will ever forgive you for not taking me along with you to Sandhya's 10th birthday party, or for laughing your head off everytime you tell the story of how I fell into a dustbin when I was 3 (ok, let's not get into that!)....

Anyways, I will sign off by calling her my one and only "Yakkkaaaaaaaaaaa*!!" :-) My dear sister, this one's for you!

Yakka-local slang word for big sister in Tamil, Akka is the true word.

Of 7 Course Moroccan Meals!

Last night, Jyothi, Sankari and I decided to eat out. On Sankari's suggestion, we tried out this Moroccan place called Menara. Looks very unassuming from the outside. You enter it and whoa! It felt like I had walked into a scene from "The Arabian nights". Dim red and green lights, costumed waiters, exquisite low tables with round cushions as seats; they even had paintings of camels and deserts on the walls!

So, we tried to act dignified and not too excited and made our way to our cushions. Being a vegetarian, you have to order the Vegetarian Dinner that is an elaborate 7-course meal! We started off with amazingly soft bread and Moroccan salad. Suddenly, there was loud Middle-Eastern music and out came this exotic looking Beledi dancer. I admit, the conservative person that I am, I was a little embarrassed to be witnessing what you would conventionally call a Belly Dance, but she was just amazing! Completely lithe and graceful, it was fascinating to watch. She drew out the audience, and made everyone dance atleast for a few mins with her!She even did 2 pieces balancing a sword on her head. I then realized that maybe this was an art form with the wrong reputation. Later, on talking to Alcina (that was her name), we learnt that the name of the dance is originally Beledi that was corrupted to Belly Dance by foreign visitors/travelers to Egypt/Middle East who misinterpreted the name in their accounts and books. And what's more, by day, she works for Applied Materials! All through this, the waiter continued to serve us course after course. We finished with some excellent baklava and some sweet mint tea.

So that, my dear readers, was easily the most exotic meal I have ever had! It is similar to Indian dining in terms of eating with your hands, washing your hands before and after the meal etc. Although on the expensive side, Menara is definitely worth one visit for the experience!

So long!

PS-For everyone who has asked me how I have the time to post in this thing, that took me about 10 mins to write. And I hope other bloggers will agree, that is time well spent in documenting experiences and transferring them to family and friends! :-)

New lands New Horizons

What is it like to discover a land? To set foot on a place where no man or woman has ever been before?! I cannot imagine. And I, probably, will never know.

But I do know how it feels like to travel to new lands. How it is to peer out of a plane with my nose to the window, or stick my head out of the train as it hurries across lush fields...There's something about visiting a new place, a slight apprehension, a quick rush of blood!

I have always learnt something from every travel expedition I've been on. My parents always made it a point to take us out on vacation to different places. From picturesque Kashmir to spiritual Kanyakumari, from bustling Calcutta to bindaas Bombay, it was one big learning experience. And the annual trip to Kerala, we always looked forward to that. That is one amazing place! The narrow streets, the smell of wet earth, the mellifluous Malayalam and the clean, religious people. Oh well...so many more trips...can't do justice to them all here. I am grateful that I have been able to do a fair bit of traveling here in the US too...it's been great fun!

My point is we can learn more by just traveling to a place than by reading a 100 books! Don't get me wrong, I am very pro-books, but just that an experience can instil a lot more, and leave you with great memories as a bonus!

Ok, me stopping for now before I get too nostalgic! :-)

Yosemite Part 2

The cables were nothing like I had imagined. Sankari(my hyper-enthu roommate, who had been there before) had told me that there are cables to go up the last 900 feet and get this, she said something like,"Those cables are basically what you hold on to, and if you let go, it's a freefall to death". Haha...now I saw what she meant. The last 900 feet are up a steep rock face, which seemed to me like it was a 90 degree incline (it is actually around 45 degrees I believe). Two steel cables run parallel to each other and up the rock, with wooden planks every 10 feet or so. You can pick up a pair of gloves (for a better grip on the cables) from the measly looking glove-pile at the bottom (tip - get your own gloves!!!) and head up. We were rather late getting to that point, so there was a continuous stream of people coming down. The space between the 2 cables (which is the "path" you go on) is only about 4-5 feet across, and it's not very convenient when people are crossing you. The gloves are not really of much help and in fact, I kept feeling that they were slipping off. But I guess it is better than no gloves at all! It is scary climbing up Half-Dome on those cables. My hands were aching because I was basically pulling myself up while clinging onto the cables for dear life(literally!). And I dared not look down for fear of psyching out. Even then, I had all my worst thoughts running through my head, and for a while, I had no idea why I was doing that and was not sure if it would be worth it, if you think about all the dangers it poses. But I made it to the top, and Wow! It is not so much the view as the feeling that you made it that exhilarates. But the view is amazing, you see the green valley and some of the snow-capped mountains around. And oh, who do I meet up there but 3 Tamil girls from Madras! :D Amazing!! One of them was even from Santa Clara (very near San Jose). Really small world ...I was struck to hear Tamil on Half-Dome!

I had to climb back down soon 'coz there were folks waiting. The climb down is definitely easier, but one thing that strikes you is how sheer the drop is. And again, I didn't think about it too much, I was just concentrating on the cable and where to put my foot next! And yes, the cable-climb was where my dear sneakers were slipping on the rock-face and I realized somewhere during that fit of panic that I needed to buying hiking shoes if I was going to keep up at this sort of thing. The descent down the rock (the one without the cables) is not that easy either, although it is not as steep as the actual dome. There is nothing to hold on to and you don't always find the steps made out of the rock. Anyways, from then on, it was pretty much downhill (literally and figuratively in terms of our aches and pains). We left the top at about 5:30pm and began the descent. A lot easier, but it still stresses your knees out. Not advisable to be on the trail after sundown, so we basically slipped/slid/tumbled and ran down the trail without a stop. Reached the bottom at 8:30 and we were relieved to take the shuttle to the Parking Lot. The others had very cleverly left us notes on the van telling us that they were at the restaurant. Made it there, managed to eat something and left. I also bought some souvenirs at the store.

The facts: 17 miles (27.4km) round trip, ~4400 feet elevation change, conquered in 10 hours. Half-Dome is 8842 feet above sea level.

We stayed that night at this super-cool, totally comfortable mobile home. All of us were too tired to do a post-mortem of the day's events and just went to sleep, grateful for the comfort. We decided to take it easier on Sunday and went to Mirror Lake. It's a 1-mile hike to the really pretty lake. You can see a reflection of Half-Dome on the lake (hence the name). We also spotted a really graceful deer (or is it a stag, I don't know, it had antlers though) run by us. Got to cross the lake, freezing water about knee-deep. We also sat on some rocks and played a round of Pictionary before we accepted the fact that it was too uncomfortable a spot for that, considering that I was sliding down the rock every 2 minutes and might end up sliding down all the way to the lake taking the Pictionary board and who knows what else down with me!

We left Yosemite National Park, barely managing to avert a tank-empty fuel disaster! The drive back was fun too. We had some great music from Jaggi's real cool iPod! And I must say, Ashish and I were good DJs (do I hear applause?)! Soon, cell phones started working, and everyone went into the inevitable zone of returning phone calls. Made it back in decent time, had dinner at Rajjot, and reached home at around 10:30pm. Renuka and Kritika actually decided not to walk more then 20 steps a day to make up (or is it make down?) for the excessive walking that was done during the weekend! :-)

I don't think I can do justice to all the myriad encounters and all the Quotable Quotes that were a crucial part of the trip and drove us into hysterics at times. Each one of us has our own anecdotes (or different versions of the same anecdotes!) to narrate.Kudos to everyone for planning and executing the trip with so much enthu! Great company, great time!

Yosemite Part 1

Another exciting experience to share...another trip report. All junta who claim my posts are too long, I might as well warn you, this is one of "those". Ok, let's start at the very beginning. As you may have guessed by now, there is an ultra-enthu gumbal (gumbal=gang) here and we spend our time planning weekends and executing those plans! This weekend was Destination Yosemite. For the uninitiated, Yosemite (pronounced Yo-say-mi-tee) is a National Park about 200 miles from here. From the time I came here, everyone has been telling us that it is a must-see. I understand it is the Sierra-Nevada mountains that are up there.

The people involved are Renuka (aka Nunu/Nuke/Anoha), Kritika (aka Kiti), Jaggi (aka Jag, Jaggubhai), Ashwin (wonder why we haven't aka-ed him yet, for now let's say the driver) and keeping the group together was Ashish Garg (aka Gargi boy/Gangadharan/aog(read ugh)/God) and me (of course, I'm not going to tell you what I am aka!). We rented a minivan on Friday afternoon. We had planned to take off at around 2pm; we had a Caribbean party at work Friday afternoon and so, could afford to leave early. But surprise, surprise, it was 6pm by the time we hit the road. We reached Yosemite, quite eventlessly at around 10:30pm. The guys had booked a tent. We drove to the site, it was a canvas tent with a couple of beds, quite decent. Had dinner and slept tight in our sleeping bags. That is bear country and there were apparently some screams from the rangers who were trying to scare away approaching bears that night. But I slept blissfully through all of that.

We were up and raring to go by about 9:30am Saturday morning, after nice hot showers and sandwiches for breakfast. Would have been better if we were ready earlier, but what the hell - it's a vacation! We had planned to hike to Half-Dome, touted by many as "the" trail to hike at Yosemite. Look at
http://www.nps.gov/yose/trip/valleyhikes.htm#halfdome
for more info, Half-Dome is at the bottom of that list. We were at the trailhead by 10am and started up. It is an uphill climb almost all the way. You get to see the Nevada Falls plunge into the chasm at about 3.5 miles up the trail. It is a very scenic spot and most people stop the hike there. We sat by the water's edge. It is an uplifting feeling to stretch your legs and watch the river hurtle down, with the sun on your face and water lapping your feet. Oh yeah and the methi and aloo parathas helped too! :-) Not for long, we had a dome to climb, or atleast half a dome.

Left the Falls behind at around 1:30 and continued up. Till then, the climb was not too steep and we felt like we would make it. But alas, the worst was yet to come. There is a flat meadow for about half a mile after Nevada Falls which is the calm before the storm. After that for about 4 miles is a steep ascent through forest-like terrain. But we kept at it. We reached a sign that said "Half-Dome 2 miles" and were spurred on by that. Boy, was that sign misleading or what?! We kept going higher and higher and finally reached a point that seemed to me like it was 2 miles covered. Only to realize that there was this big rock face to climb over and only after that would we even get to the infamous cables that would take us up Half-Dome! That's the point where you start to detest your backpack and your legs feel like lead, been there? Well, as much as I wanted to, I wasn't about to give up then, not after that arduous uphill climb. So we took on the next climb up the rocky face, no trail or anything, just scramble up the rocks with some steps carved out of the boulders at some places. What makes it worse is the fact that there are people coming down and believe me, there really is no room for a two-way lane! The sun shines down harder in the mountains, and feeling hot and dusty we got to the cables. Now's the real fun....

Whew!

Here's the quick synopsis of this weekend: I realized that I needed a new pair of hiking shoes. And at the end of it, some of us felt like we could do with a new pair of limbs! :-) More details to follow.....

Madras nalla Madras!

You know I can't go long without writing about my good ol' Madras. I practically lived there all my life! I really miss the place. Ah...what it is to ride in our Pallavan buses with the cantankerous conductors, feel the wind in your face at Elliot's beach, listen to mamis discuss pallus and zaris at Nalli-Kumaran, eat bhel puri at Planet Yumm (or sambar vadai at Saravana Bhavan!), ride behind your friend on her Scooty, take a morning walk at Theosophical Society, stay for hours chatting at Shakes & Creams (even though you finished your icecream ages ago!), hobnob with the 'cultural elite' at a kutcheri.....I could go on and on. I am sure this is not the last you will hear on this topic :-)

Well, I like California too, and Ann Arbor, of course was awesome! I must admit that there's beauty and charm in every place, and all we need is to discover it and relish it. But Chennai rules! :-)

Later!

PS-Talk to me if you don't know any of these places, you have missed out!

Great Minds

I was reading a chapter of "Ignited Minds" by Dr. Kalam yesterday (and no, I have not read "Wings of Fire" yet!) in which he talks about genius. He talks about Ramanujan, who had no formal education or proper means of living. But his genius and love of mathematics transcended those limitations. Sir C.V. Raman, the Nobel laureate started off at an Accountant General's office. The Indian mind and intellect, Sir Raman says, are by no means inferior in quality in comparison to other nations. But probably what we lack is courage and driving force. we need a destruction of the defeatist spirit that we so readily embrace. Another notable point is made by Dr. Chandrasekhar, also a Nobel laureate. He noticed that in the modern era before 1910, there were no outstanding scientists in the country. But suddenly in the period from 1920-1925, we had 5 or 6 internationally acclaimed scientists. He attributes that to the need for self-expression that was a dominant motive of the young during the freedom movement. Self-assertion to show to the West that we were no less competent.

Is this why we appear to be stagnant intellectually? Yes, we do have great minds and great ideas generated in the country even now. But somehow, I expect more greatness from a country of a billion people. The freedom struggle was too long ago for us to relate to it, all we know about it is what we get from history books and hyped-up movies. But do we need something like a freedom struggle to motivate us? The struggle of the modern day, the tussle between political parties, the tug-of-war between feeding the poor and launching space rockets....there is soo much to trigger our minds and draw inspiration from. What are we waiting for?

Of Human Bondage

Two of my close friends are getting married!! Well, we all know it has to happen one day, but when they actually told me it was happening, I was psyched! To me, it is a HUGE (irreversible) decision and the speed with which they made their decisions continues to amaze me. One girl decided without even meeting the guy, and the other made up her mind in about 2 weeks!! As you may have guessed, both are "arranged marriages".

Without getting into an endless debate on the topic, I think arranged marriages have their pluses. Atleast, you don't have high expectations and tend to resign yourself to reality. I have seen lots of these marriages work. On the other hand, you have almost no idea about the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with!! A sobering thought. Well, I'll cross the bridge when I come to it.

Good luck to my buddies for a long and happy married life!! (Gosh, that sounds elderly and cliched!)

Other views? (Is anyone reading this at all?, hmm....I wonder)

Saratoga Gap Trail and more

Hello!

Monday morning! Weekend flew by. Yesterday, we went hiking on the Saratoga Gap Trail, on my roommate's recommendation, and it turned out to be a good trail. It was low-moderate in difficulty, just a few ups and downs, and a few rocks. But some really nice views and huge trees.Trees are always good!

I was then on the phone for like 2+ hours!! But then hey, what are weekends for, if not for chatting with buddies?! Oh and my sister got something for me from her Florida trip. It is a fridge magnet which says "I am smiling because you are my sister. I am laughing because there is nothing you can do about it!". I thought it was nice, and so typical of my sister! :)

Weekend's here

It's been a long week. Well, on more careful thought, this was one of the shorter weeks being only 4 days long.Anyways, I am glad the weekend's here! I was hoping to get a quiet couple of days, but I don't believe that is going to happen. We already have a bunch of things planned out; Badminton, volleyball, hiking etc. I can't say no to that stuff!Hmm...looks like I am going to have to squeeze some time to carry out my mundane household stuff.

We played an amazing game of Ultimate frisbee during Sports at work today! Was good to get back on the field and run like that again. I could be a lot better though. We played 3 on 3 and it was a big field. So we will only get better as time goes by, hopefully!

Yeah I can see that this post is already getting kinda boring (I am as sleepy as can be!), so I will stop for now.

Later!

Grand Canyon!

Hello! My first posting!

Here's my first hand account of the great Grand Canyon!! Before I go more into what happened, some background info, the Canyon has been formed by the forces of the Colorado River and wind erosion. It has a North Rim and a South Rim. The South Rim where we went is more accessible and frequented. There are easy, relatively flat Rim Trails around the canyon and also the more difficult trails that go down into the Canyon. One can also go rafting in the Colorado river, which is booked 2 years in advance for commercial rafting and 15 years in advance if you want to take your own raft!!! The Canyon is a 4 hour drive from Phoenix, one of the nearest big airports.

I flew out of San Jose Friday night and reached Phoenix (in Arizona) at around 9:40pm. Arun (who had reached before and rented a car) picked me up at the airport. We then went to get (supposedly) 2 of his friends who were also coming with us. Turned out that it was Arthi and one of her Austin friends, Sajosh!!! I was sooo surprised. They had hidden it from us...as a surprise. We thought Arthi was not coming, so it was great to see her again! The four of us then drove to Flagstaff (which is 2.5 hours from Phoenix and 1.5 hours from the Canyon) and stayed there at a motel for the night. We left early next morning for the Canyon. We reached 9ish. Vaishno and Aniket (who had reached Phoenix earlier on Friday) were already at the campsite. They had rented a Mustang and every third word Vaishno said was 'Mustang'! :) I was pretty excited about the Mazda6 we had rented too! We decided to leave all the stuff in the car and start hiking right away.
The Grand Canyon is a breath-taking phenomenon of nature! It is soo huge and absolutely marvelous!! So on Saturday we took on the Bright Angel trail that goes down 9 miles to the river. It is not recommended to go down to the river and back in one day. We did about a 4-mile hike down and back. There are warning signs everywhere, telling you to take enough water and food during the hike. The Canyon gets hot during the day (30C +). There are rest stations at 1.5 and 3-mile points with water and restrooms. Going down is easy, with awesome views all around you! Climbing back up is quite another story...the climb is steep, and you are hot, thirsty and dusty! Vaishno and Arthi did not come down beyond the 3-mile point, but the boys and I went down a little further. We all made it fine to the top at about 5pm. Our shoes, socks and pants had changed colour to the orange-red of the Grand Canyon mud!. Feeling hot and dirty, but satisfied, we went to the campsite and pitched our tent. There are quite nice facilities at this campsite in terms of bathrooms, drinking water etc. We barbecued in the night for dinner (Hari and Shruti joined us at the camp that night). We then crashed for the night, 4 of us girls in our sleeping bags in one tent, just enough space...but was fun!:)

We were up the next day morning by 5am, hoping to leave for the hike at 6:30am. And we did leave, not too late at around 7am. There are free shuttle buses running to different locations in the Canyon, so we parked the cars at the Market Plaza (where there are shops and stuff) and took the shuttle to the head of the South Kaibab trail. In between bus rides, dear Aniket realized that in his excitement, he had left his backpack in the car. He went back to get it, as a result of which we reached the trailhead only at 9:30am. This South Kaibab trail is tougher than Bright Angel because it is steeper and has no water or shade anywhere on the trail. Which means we had to carry lots of water and food. We started off and went down to the 1.5-mile stop eventlessly. There, Vaishno decided to head back up, and not continue down with us. We also met a ranger there who told us that 3 people had been rescued from the 3-mile stop that morning where they had been found lying face down.... one of who may be a fatality. That scared me a little bit, but we were sure that we'd be fine since we had enough water and food on us. We continued down to the 3-mile point, called Skeleton Point, where you get a first glimpse of the Colorado River. It is an amazing feeling to catch sight of the green river amidst all that red Canyon!! We sat there for a bit to catch our breaths before the trek back up...when we met 2 people coming up. They were coming back from the river. This inspired Aniket to go down to the river, so he and Arun (the 2 fittest people in our group) continued down to the river. We were a little worried to let them go, after all those warnings, but we were also quite sure that they would make it back up fine. We started back up from that point. It is very hot and we had to conserve the water, because that was all the water we would get until the top (no water on the trail!). I made it up in pretty good time of 2 hours; Arthi and her friend came up an hour later. Vaishno was waiting for us at the top and we left there at around 4pm to look around. Aniket and Arun would take much longer to climb back from the river and we had decided to meet them at the campsite. We took the bus to check out some more viewpoints, each one more amazing than the next. We went to the Plaza to buy some groceries and souvenirs. While we were there, Arun and Aniket showed up, they had made it back up in an amazing time of 5 hours! So at the end of the day they had done a 15 mile hike (more than half of it uphill) in about 8 hours. We heard amazing narrations from them about the river trek, and went back to the campsite.

Monday morning, Vaishno and Aniket headed back for Phoenix because they had an afternoon flight. We took a shower (yes, the campsite actually had nice shower facilities), hiked on the much easier, flat Rim Trail and then started driving back to Phoenix. At Phoenix, Arthi and Sajosh had someone to meet whom they knew via a friend at Austin so we dropped them off at her house. We then looked around Phoenix a bit, there's a Lake Tempe there, then had French crepe for dinner and a HUGE ice cream! :) Phoenix is really hot, close to 40C! It was great. My flight was at 9:25, so we dropped the rental car off and I left for San Jose. I didn't want to come back at all...after all that fun! So at the end of the trip, we had a total of around 14 miles in 2 days, half of it climbing up the steep walls of the Canyon...felt good, but now, I am left thinking, what if I had gone all the way down to the river too...hmm...I know I will, sometime...soon.

Now it's soo hard to get back to work, after all that excitement. It was a really memorable weekend...the awesome Grand Canyon visited with some of the nicest people I know; Aniket's wisecracks, Vaishno's irresistible mannerisms and expressions, Arun's meticulousness and sincerity, Arthi's cool attitude! (I don't know Sajosh well enough!) And everyone's enthu!! These guys have taken loads of awesome pictures; I will find a way to put them up soon.