I came, I saw, I got conquered

I wanted to write this as a travel blog, honestly, i did..but there are times when my mind wants to ramble on and let its long held emotions out.Hopefully, dear reader, you will find this a good experience and not just a rant. Subsequent entries of this episode, i hope, will be there for you as a travel blog..for now, these are the words that my brain's pouring out looking through my heart's eye.

This was a major tick mark off my bucket list.But i had the insight this time, that i wouldn't know what to expect and as i am learning slowly, not expecting might lead to good results. The fact was that, even though i had seen hundred's of snaps of the Grand canyon(who hasn't?), heard or read many accounts of its formation  and awe inspiring beauty, in my mind i knew that it was nothing next to the real thing.

I knew there were layers and layers of pillars and cliffs manifesting the eye but i also knew that no 2d picture could ever capture the depth of the contusions carved by the mighty Colorado river. So , in a way, beforehand and ideally, i had good knowledge of something, knew or rather imagined the emotion that would envelope me when i took in the sight but with the foresight that i had no idea what i was talking about or what i would face. And the Grand Canyon did not disappoint.

I felt nothing... In one of the rare occasions in my life, i felt nothing rational to think of except for a nagging doubt that i couldn't see the bottom(I would still be persisting with this doubt after 2 days there but suffice to say that i still find it weird that thats the only thing that came in my mind..where's the bottom?)..There was a WTF exclamation, i think i said it...not sure, then my mind clanged shut.

What can you emote when you see nature's timeless intricate splendor and realise that let alone a few lenses and a sensor, your eyes themselves are not enough to take in whats before you? Being an ardent admirer of the optical sensor of the human anatomy, i had to admit that it failed me.

It wanted to take in the whole, but there was too much of it. It wanted to feast on the details, but couldn't fathom what to notice first among the hundreds of landscapes before it. It wanted to gauge the depth of the ravines but could never manage to look at the bottom. It wanted to look at the depth of the canyon of the canyon but what was the reference? It wanted to feast on the landscape of granite and snow(which incidentally  was the first time i experienced in 23 years of my life!) but discovered that the topping of visual delight was too much.

My optical sensor realised it had met its match and stuttered and my CPU reacted promptly to such emergencies as it usually does- it shut down. believe me, the rebooting took a long time and when my brain finally spat out a word that i understood- HUMILITY- never sounded sweeter.

I consider myself one of the main proponents of mankind's endeavors and a huge fan of Roark's ego but i had to accede defeat. What could mankind do that would remain for so long and get unaffected, let alone noticed, in front of such a behemoth? ( i seriously tried out idioms to compare the canyon and the futility of making any attempt to make a mark on it but believe me, the grand canyon is the epitome of leviathan monuments, the apotheosis of giants...i think i have to contend with "suryange torcha?" and back away)

The grand canyon is timeless, but also a time machine which takes you to the moment  when Father Time walked through Mother Nature's gallery and stopped.A look at it and you know that before it, you come, you see, you get conquered.

But this is a travel log. Its supposed to tell you about the cruises enjoyed in a SUV with the rest of the gang. Travelling across the Mojave desert listening to Hotel California(without the feeling of coolant in my hair, thank the lord!) and the best of GNR. Its also supposed to be about how the GPS, when programmed to take us to a place to fill our stomachs took upon itself to take us to detour from the interstate, crawl through the desert and decide to go 71 miles back for a pizza place.Thankfully common sense prevailed here.
It should also be about how the gang invented an acrobatic way of playing UNO at 75 mph and did enjoy it for a couple of hours(must be a record for the fastest method of playing the game, relatively speaking of course). It should be about how the roads were made of butter and the miles melted, 500 miles overnight is no ordinary feat for guys who had finished their mid term the previous day.

It should be about arriving bed ragged at the motel, opening the car door and getting hit by the chill and wind(all 0 degrees of it). It should be about waking up the next morning and looking at a snow filled landscape among the grass and shrub around us. maybe it should be an elaboration of the scrub land we had to go through to get to the park entrance, still not getting any view of the canyon. maybe it should be a note of the excited shuttle ride to the viewpoint, the vista being obscured by trees and the first gasp at looking across the precipice.

Maybe...or maybe it should just be an overflow of the inadequate words which attempt to describe the splendor of the grand canyon.

This part, day one, is just me gushing out, perhaps sometimes incoherently. We did do a 3 1/2 mile trek down the "kaibab" trail, but that was nothing much. Down a couple of ridges, and still not getting near enough to see the bottom.A look near the "ooh aah point" to gather a panoramic view of the cliffs jutting below and above us..Perfect Sergio Leone  ambiance, the only thing missing is the cloppity clop of horse hooves and cowboy boots and the haunting renditions of Ennio Morriccone..which gives me a good opportunity to add this wonderful bit of music to get you going..The Ecstasy of Gold..



The walk did involve discovering the fact that each bend of the trail gives you newer vistas, and with the binoculars, opens up the devil in the details. An overall sweep with the eye does little justice to encompass the diversity in the terrain. The close ups through my pair of olympus binocs did open up the gaps in the ravines and show the sprawling facades of granite towering over us.

The first day also gave me a sample of the single most claustrophobic element that i experienced in the canyon - its silence. The voices do carry a bit over the rim walls, the crunching footsteps are your company but the wind does not blow and if you lag back from your company and stand still, the silence envelopes you. Except for the occasional thundering of the flights overhead- which only adds to amplify the magnitude of the silence. Imagining a lost lonely trekker among the plains at the bottom, seeing a glimpse of civilisation as a flight passes overhead, but then realising the fact that you are invisible and unheard of in the canyon walls...that is scary!

Well these were my first words on the first sight of the first trail down the grand canyon..what will follow..pretty soon..is a walk over a 10 mile hike and being stunned, or as Mr.Roget would choose to say being  aghast, amazed, astonished, astounded, bewildered, blown away, bowled over, breathless, confounded, confused, dismayed, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, floored, frozen, numb, overcome, overwhelmed, shocked, speechless, startled, stumped, stupefied, surprised, taken aback by the discoveries after each step down the Bright Angel Trail. Wait a while folks..

Oh and here's a pic of the intrepid trekkers..

Illusion

Travelling across California by train, i am struck by the similarities...in fact, so may identical facets of life here between the small towns and villages here and our villages in India. The same cracked roads beside the rails, the same type of hedges and chain link fences, the same electrical and telephone poles even!
Its no different from our Mandya, Ramnagara or Channapatna..infact the scenery here is rather drab, with nary a human or a house between miles of land. Of course i am travelling in the winter, but that doesn't mean im traveling in a season devoid of life in the farms. The only difference that i felt which was very noticeable was the size of the farms..even a farmer sitting on the edge of an average type income has acres of land in his domain. But then again, the result of it is very short of grandeur in terms of income. To sustain himself, in this vast country ( so vast that it celebrates new year thrice in a single day!) , he needs to have this amount of land. Farmers in Mandya and Maddur may have less land to till and harvest but that is sufficient to eke out a living there..there is absolutely no difference wrt to their countries, how they stand financially!
That is another myth busted i suppose about most farmers being rich here due to the vast lands possessed here..there are i suppose a similar ratio of rich to poor farmers here. But one thing to introspect..if the small fare have big farms, what are the sizes of the big guns here?

The trick is to keep breathing

Disillusionment seems to be a trend nowadays with the generation that can define now as the time of prime youth.We...well let me generalize, i am a comrade in the crowd,we know that we are gonna be obsolete, our thoughts are gonna be obsolete, we see it happening among our younger cousins or, the lucky few who have nieces or nephews.

Unfortunately, we also see that current philosophies and dogmas have already become obsolete for us to follow and revel in the glory of life.So, has the flame been snuffed out before it could ignite any meaningful spawns of great thoughts and deeds for the future? Maybe, or maybe there is a cold draft blowing that chills everyone to the bone currently...

Too poetic? Maybe, but what can you do in the midst of all this negativity clouding your thoughts and others whom you suppose you idealize (now you are not even sure that you do!)

The answer, very predictably ,is of course, trudge on, swallow the bile rising in your throat, the blank state of your thoughts, the depressing monotony of your actions, your sarcastic observations of highly "enthused" friends or strangers and the irritable dark cloud in your mind that says every ones fucking up things as usual. What do you do when nothing appeals to you in life? what do you do when you realize that you are not passionate about things which you thought you were born to do?What do you do when you know that the intellectuals in your crowd are as bland as you are?..Trudge on? Where to?

You don't want to take life seriously, believe me, you don't...and yet going with the flow is so passe, even though you acknowledge that more or less you are doing the damn thing.All you can hope for is that something re-ignites that flame and you find that there are some avenues you hadn't noticed...unless there is the nagging thought that these are longer routes that eventually reach a dead end anyway.Probably the same brick wall..who knows?

Fine, you don't look inside, you get only black holes inside that screw your space-mind continuum anyway, look elsewhere for hope, for inspiration.

Yeah you see Dark Knight and appreciate its cynicism, but hullo, its a dark tribute to a dark screwed up anti hero lifestyle anyway. Or you proclaim that Transformers came again, made you hold your breath to the end again...but then you really really wanted it to, you wouldn't have forgiven it if it had been a damp squib, the final emotion being relief cause it finally met some expectations you had set. Why movies all of a sudden? simple, they are the alternate worlds that we can escape to and indulge in cause your world aint working right brother.And they have come time and again to rescue you from the pits of drudgery but now they come few and far between.Hell ,when a twenty year old still talks about The Shawshank Redemption or Aladdin with reverence, you know that the current cloud of imagination is lacking something.

I have a miniature solution, works once in a while, but still does, mind you..listen to soundtracks of movies and let your mind run free in the shower.If someone told me that Einstein got it right when he was in the shower, i for one ,would be least surprised.

I'll let you in on a little secret about this blog, it initially started out as a search to find out spots of bright aspects of life to cling on to.But i asked myself so many questions that overwhelmed me that i have no idea why i started this as a happy or light string of thoughts!..Cheers mate..

The trick is to keep breathing i suppose...that quote is not original but I'll add this bit myself, not to ask too many Why's, a little perhaps, not always.Dont question your decisions always or after every other bend of the road...realize that once you had taken this decision ..any decision..for a reason, and that reason, even if you have forgotten it now was good enough to set you on this path with a smile on your face and fire in your heart.As Jobs says, you can only connect the dots looking back, not looking ahead.So trust yourself and drink up my maties yo-ho!