Trip to Yosemite

After an admittedly crappy post last time...I decided to write about more familiar territory...our long weekend trip to yosemite. For those of you that have no idea, Yosemite is one of the amazing national parks on the California-Nevada border and houses the Sierra-Nevada ranges. For hiking lovers, it has about 800 miles worth of hiking trails in it (ok i got to tell that this info was given by our shuttle driver/guide). Anyway, for any trip to be enjoyable there has to be a group of people and you know how hard it is to get people move their asses esp. the graduate kind! After countless emails and phone calls, I could finally convince 4 of my friends on thursday (we had to leave on saturday!). Now you have to know that it was a long weekend on a summer and yosemite gets crowded like hell and there was no way we could get accommodation for cheap, if at all we get. One of my main ideas was to set up a camping tent or two and really enjoy the experience (never camped before in my life:(). But since the group was finalized just 2 days before I could only get a hotel room 15 miles from the south entrance of the park.

Day 1:

Our (Me, Sandeep, Anindya, Naveen and Sarath) journey began on saturday morning because Naveen and Sharath had to come from sandiego by friday night. We rented a car from enterprise for 3 days and had two designated drivers (me and anindya). It was a 315 mile journey from SB to Yosemite and Andindya decided started driving. After almost 130 miles, his reserves were out and when it was decided he was going to kill us if he drove any longer, I took the steering wheel. This was my first time driving long distance, so was a little skeptical. Except the CA-41 highway which was too narrow and scary as shit, I guess I was ok. We reached our hotel by 3pm and to our surprise the hotel was different. It was an old rustic looking place managed by some old people and had this quaint laid back country feeling which immediately got us into the holiday mood. We dumped our stuff in the room and set out for the park in our car after taking some directions from the hotel. The manager was kind enough to give us the admission pass for the park free of cost (it was $20 per day). Yosemite park is a behemoth of a place and even in car it takes anywhere from 2-4 hours to reach places that you want to see. Our first stop was the "Glacier Point" at about 7000ft high which has an awesome view of the entire park (the valley, a couple of waterfalls and the half-dome). After taking our fair share of crazy pictures it was almost getting dark and we set out to return. But there were telescopes set up by some astronomy enthusiasts who were more than happy to show people jupiter and its 4 moons on their telescopes. This was my first time to watch jupiter from a telescope and believe me it was freaking awesome. Then we sat down for a presentation about astronomy by some ex-NASA guy who dressed up like a witch. But after 1 hour of wearing the 3d goggles and darkness we had enough and decided to go back to hotel. Since it was totally dark and we had to drive down the hill with sharp u-turns, we asked Naveen to drive (he had more experience and we didnt have balls!). After eating pizza at a nearby restaurant and some power bar/gatorade shopping for the next day hiking we crashed into our beds and promised to get out of the hotel by 7, the next day!

Day 2

I did get up at 6:30 and got ready by 7 :) but by the time all the others got ready (bad thing, everyone decided to take a bath) it was past 9! After having an american style breakfast at the hotel we headed to the park to start our hike. I called up my friend Tushar who had been here before and asked him about the best and doable (he did a 18+18 mile half-dome hike!!)hikes. We decided to do the Panorama + Mist trail hike (8.2 miles -- 6-7 hours) from the glacier point down to the valley. Trouble was, since we started so late we couldn't even get tickets to the shuttle that took us from the valley to the glacier point. We had to take a shuttle because there was no way we could hike 8.2 miles down from glacier point to valley and 8.2 mile back up !! So, we had two choices, either do a small 4 mile hike which starts and ends at glacier point or do the 8.2 mile hike and go down to the valley. But since the last shuttle from valley back to glacier point is 1:30 pm we had to stay in the valley for the night and take the shuttle next day morning, if we decided to do the big one. Luckily (because it was so crowded) we were able to reserve a tent cabin in the valley for the night and decided to go for the big hike. We couldnt even cancel our original hotel reservation because all our stuff was there and we didnt have time to go back to the hotel and vacate. So we had two rooms that night!

By the time we started at the trail head at the glacier point it was 1:20 pm and we were all excited and raring to go. After 2 miles of downhill hiking and clicking innumerable pics we reached a water hole. We got enthralled by it and kinda gone overboard and spent almost an hour playing in the water and taking pics (this costed us later as you will soon see). Then started the 2 mile uphill and undoubtedly the difficult part of the trek. Huffing and puffing and taking pit stops for water breaks we finally managed to the uphill. The main reason we took this trail was because it passes through 3 waterfalls (Nevada, Vernal and Illilouette) and the views are unbelievable. When we reached Nevada falls we were more than half-way through our journey and totally exhausted, so couldnt resist the temptation of taking a dip in the pond there!! After 20-30 min of swim in the cold water, we got revitalized and resumed our journey. Mist trail starts from here and god was that steep. Almost a mile of this trail was just steep rocks with no proper trail and it was little creepy. Then we got to Vernal Fall and it was so close that it was breathtaking. It was 7 already and there was an hour's journey left with sun already going down. We were literally racing against the twilight and it was little scary to hike in dark but we managed to reach the valley by 8pm in darkness. The rest of the night included catching sight of a bear (another wish come true!!) , me accidentally entering a womens' restroom (in my defense i was too tired to look at the sign :)) and finally crashing in our tent-cabins (closest we came to camping).

Next day, we had an american breakfast (loved it) and took a shuttle from valley to the glacier point. The driver/guide kept blabbering about the facts of yosemite valley as they usually do and i almost dozed off after listening to his endless drone. Then...drove back to hotel..vacated...returned to SB by evening. A great trip and when I come to think about it was actually more fun and exciting because we didnt (couldnt) plan a lot of it ahead. My friend says its more fun when its unplanned...maybe its right!!!

More pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/vinodkone/yosemite

Some misgivings with English

Don't get me wrong...I like English. Those beautiful expressions with a play of words always get me. Infact, that's the main reason I read novels... I love the way authors express certain things which completely takes the reading experience to a new level. But having said that, English is one of the most ridiculously difficult languages to learn, esp. to speak. I am never sure how a newly encountered word should be pronounced. The problem lies in the fact that, many a time, there is no correlation between how you write a word and how you pronounce it. For example, how am I supposed to know that 'Calle' is supposed to be pronounced with a 'y', when a 'pillar' or a 'collar' have their double l's intact. If you want 'll' to be pronounced as a 'y', why can't we just have the word as 'Caye' and get done with it already. One of the reasons for this inconsistency is the fact that lot of words in English have been incorporated from other languages like Spanish, Arabic etc. Ok, I can agree with that to an extent but that excuse is not entirely true. For one, instead of blindly incorporating words from a foreign language into the English vocabulary, we can adapt them to suit the nativity. Second, this ludicrousness is not limited to imported words...what about those silent k's in 'knight', 'know' etc. I don't think these are foreign words...so I don't understand whats the need for a letter to be present in writing but silent when speaking. How simple would life be, if we had words like 'nite' and 'no' (ok, this second guy has a different meaning already..but I guess you got my point). And don't even get me started on the various styles of English out there, like U.S, U.K etc.

In that regard, I love the other two languages that I know, Hindi and Telugu. The beauty lies in the fact that What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). If you tell me any new word in these languages, I can exactly tell what it looks like in writing (with a high probability...i am copping out here). I think its easy to learn a language if its like this. If I come to think about it, the reason why these Indian languages are not as ridiculous as English is probably because of the existence of a large number of 'vowels' (if they can be called so). English has just 5 (a,e,i,o,u) but Telugu and Hindi have loads of them. What this means for us, is there are lot of combinations of vowels and consonants that one can play with and coin new words...no need for those strange rules and silent/differently pronounced letters. On the flip side though, it might take a bit longer to learn the alphabet but its worth it as long as its not too extreme. I was once told by my Chinese lab mate that their alphabet has 100s of letters if not 1000s and they take like 3 years to master it!!! Needless to say I didn't sleep for next two days :) I wonder how those guys chat in IMs. God bless those 'em.

For English, though the alphabet is shorter the import is very high. But, thats one of the side effects of trying to make a language universal,.....it has to cater to all the sensibilities. Since, I cannot influence the 'whoever' defines the English language and its rules... I guess I have to deal with my love-hate relationship with it.