Samarth’s Travel Page

Yes, it was kind of hard to believe, we were married for more than three years now, and this was our first trip together. But, what the heck, we find it fortunate that we have so many friends who are willing to come and share the traveling experience with us, that this time, it kind of felt weird to just travel by ourselves. Weird, but good.
So, being the travel freaks that we are, it was just a chance we needed to go and see another place. Manasi’s conference in San Francisco was just that chance, and we (or rather I should say I) pounced on it. And as always complained by my dear wife, I got together a trip plan, which was workable, but, umm, hectic as well. Well, the “hectic” part is my wife’s opinion.
Nowadays, we both have gotten immune to the “usual” incidents of a flight getting delayed, baggage going to the east coast, when you are flying to the west, sitting in the plane for two hours before it takes off, or just plainly missing a flight, and being a standby on the next one, with the airline personnel acting like a genie, granting you a wish, when you were begging for it.
So, Manasi had some of these above mentioned “usual” problems, and she arrived later than planned, throwing my well-charted-out plan out of schedule. A night at Lata didi’s place in Sunnyvale, CA, and the next day, we were off to Lake Tahoe. Being the long weekend, I probably experienced the worst time of my life, getting a hotel in each place we were planning to visit. Also, one more lesson from the trip was that the hotel, does not, in any case, look like the photographs they put up on the internet. So, folks, beware, you might want to change the definition of “luxurious” after having stayed in your internet-booked hotel. At first, I was strongly denying the hotel to which our directions led us. After one or two of “This can’t be it”, I gave in and checked-in into the “heavenly” hotel, as described on the internet. A nice meal at a local Thai place, with the special spicy fish made our day, followed by a sunset at the lake. As with most of the places, one day is not at all enough for looking around in Lake Tahoe. But, we did take the thrilling ride of parasailing over Lake Tahoe at a height of 1200 feet. The quiet, and peace, up there, is just something everybody should experience once. We were hanging with this balloon, attached the boat, way below, with a chord. Me, and my wife, with beauty all around us. It was spectacular.
Doing the long car journey is always a thing which Manasi dislikes. But, unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice, as we had a car, our hotels were booked, and California is a big state. After each journey though, she did end up liking the place, and was grateful that we had a reservation.
Our next stop – Death Valley National Park, CA. I won’t say that it’s near Lake Tahoe, in any way whatsoever, but the journey was a splendid one. The route we took, which eventually becomes 395, and goes through Lone Pine, CA was just too beautiful. For a moment, it felt like we were driving through European countryside. Beautiful snow capped mountains, held the valleys with their arms spread wide, letting the tar road slice through them in a winding serpentine manner. “What is there to see in Death Valley?” was the question I was constantly being hammered with by Manasi, all along the way, into Death Valley. Mt. Whitney looked beautiful, from the gas station in Lone Pine. It was my first view from here, as we (I and Rakesh) didn’t even have time to look for it the last time we stopped at this gas station, on the Memorial Day weekend. On the way to furnace creek ranch, where we had a reservation, we stopped at the fascinating sand dunes in the valley. Death Valley National Park, being the largest one in US, outside of Alaska, boasts of complex geology as well as extreme temperatures. It was the mad gold rush of California, which prompted pioneers to cross this arid land, thinking of it as a shortcut to California. After having barely survived it, it was named what it is called now. The place does have a short history of borax mining, which lasted about 30 years, from 1880 to about 1910. I will put it this way – “Death Valley is scorched, dry, hot, arid, weird, barren, abandoned, but beautiful”. I got the same feeling I had, when I visited Ladakh in 1997. Barren beauty is something different, and needs to be appreciated in a different sort of way, beauty in nothingness, for miles together. With plenty of time at hand after checking in, we drove, in the driest and the hottest place in United States, to the lowest elevation in the entire western hemisphere, the Badwater Basin. It feels odd to see the sign “Sea Level” way up there, on a nearby mountain, when you are standing 282 feet below sea level. The way back from there was through the Artist’s Drive loop, and I must say, that the time couldn’t have been more perfect. At sunset, god becomes the artist, when he plays around with colors and splashes them all over the place, in that valley. We could say that each mountain glowed with shades of red, brown, orange, yellow and pink. The 8-mile drive goes through the artist’s palette, where various deposits of minerals in the rock display splendor in their own way, to the last rays of sun touching them. The aptly christened “Devil’s Golf Course” and “Devils Corn Field” are interesting to see, basically, at nothing. But, here, one starts imagining, as to how much of “nothing” can there be? I don’t know if there is an answer to this question. In other words, Like the Grand Canyon, Death Valley seems eternal, with a human’s life encompassing not even a fraction of it. Death Valley was probably under sea at one point in time, filled with lakes millions of years later, and now, shows the remnants of alternating salt deposits from that era. Obviously, it’s not a coincidence that the highest and the lowest point in the entire United States are within 150 miles of each other. One more fact that makes us salute Mother Nature for some of the most extraordinary and incomparable creations she has given the world to marvel at.
Due to lack of time, we couldn’t visit Scotty’s Castle, one of the main highlights of this place. One thing which is different at this place is that, even as late as at 10 pm, when you exit from a restaurant, after a hearty steak and chilled beer, the heat hits you, and it hits you hard. With a temperature of 120 degrees F. It’s kind of hard to experience that at any other place, except probably Middle East, which I have heard is pretty similar. In a nutshell, visiting the “hottest and driest place” with “lowest elevation in US” during the hottest month of the year was fun.
Again, a long drive took us out of Death Valley, and into Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Forest. The “as the crow flies” distance from Lone Pine and Whitney to this park is approx 30-40 miles only, but being humans that we are, and with a car at our disposal, there was no alternative but to take the long “normal” route, which takes not less than 5 hours. My excellent navigator, Manasi gave perfect directions, as always, for us to be able to reach Sequoia through the shortest possible route.
Sequoia National Park reputes itself as the oldest national park in California, with high peaks, dense forests, and the main attraction – giant redwood trees. This is the home of “The General Sherman Tree”, the largest living tree in the world. Of the many giant redwood tree groves spread across the world, Sequoia has a couple. But, driving up the tortuous road for a long time gets justified, when one sees the plaque – “Giant Forest”, and within seconds, you are greeted by two giant trees, one on each side of the road, both with massive trunks, and soaring up in the air. The trees in this forest are one of their kinds, which dwarf pretty much anything that tries to stand beside them. Manasi picked up some huge pines from near the largest tree in the world (which I had to carry all the way to College Station, TX). A couple of usual photos, and missing the sunset from a famous point, just by a few minutes, we were driving down the never-ending-winding-road back towards our hotel. On the way, we spotted a nice place besides the river for a romantic candle lit dinner, so ended up giving them some business, which included a bottle of champagne and some nice entrees, and of course, dessert. The next day was our day out of the national park, and into San Francisco. SFO was where Manasi had her conference (yeah, this trip was an add-on to her conference). It was only while driving back that Manasi kind of realized it. In the total fun we were having, she had totally forgotten about her conference. “Just a place to crash down” in SFO was not the best of places, but was close to her conference venue. Michelle, her co-worker was staying at the same hotel. Her first day at the conference, and I was off to climb near SFO. I ended up being so frustrated, when I decided upon Copernicus Peak, the highest point in the nearby counties. A complete trip report of that so-called leisure walk can be found here. The second day, I lazed around in the hotel, and had lunch with Manasi and Michelle, after which we went to the Pier 39 area of Frisco city. A suggestion from one of my friend – take a bike ride from over the Golden Gate Bridge, was promptly obeyed. We biked around 8 miles one way to the small town called Sausalito, on the other side of the bridge. This town is supposed to have a very good Indian restaurant, but with the bikes we had, and the return ferry tickets, we couldn’t try out the food there. After returning the bikes, we were off to the second part of the suggestion – eat at Shalimar, in downtown. This place was owned by a Punjabi guy, and it was jam packed with Americans and all kinds of international people. All this, besides me giving it a minus ten on a scale of one to ten on the ambience parameter. You guessed it right – the food was out of this world! The third took me Mt. Diablo. It was a good 23.4 mile hike, on which I had the whole area to myself. The trip report of this climb can be found here. The day ended, when Manasi finished with her conference, and we both drove to the wine capital of the United States. Napa, and Sonoma valleys, though competitors, produce probably ninety percent of the wine in the states. Napa, with its quaint little shops, wineries lined up one after the other, was very pretty, both in terms of scenery as well as expense. To put this in a general statement, I would say, that it was here that we had the most expensive nights’ stay as well as dinner in life. The Escargot at “Bistro Jeanty” were really good (Manasi got so freaked out that she took photos of me eating them), the steak was fabulous, but the taste of their dessert is the one which is unforgettable. It was some kind of pudding, with a layer of burnt brown sugar on top, which made it pure heaven. One of the restaurants in Napa, called French Laundry, is supposed to have featured on the TV for its cuisine. Now, agreed that the 13-course meal would be fantastic, but I think $400 per person is a little bit too much. Especially, after having read a testimonial that emphasized on the need for a Taco Bell Burrito after the dinner. We stayed at one of the bed and breakfast inns which seemed like the ones you see in movies. The next day, the guy with whom we had booked the wine tour promptly picked us up at ten. Going through the famous wineries like Beringer (Manasi is a BIG fan of the white Zinfandel), V. Sattui, Robert Mondavi (their merlot is pretty good) and Grigich Hills (which put Napa on the world map of wine-making) and tasting wines made Manasi a bit tipsy, but we sure were enjoying the feeling so much, that we ended up buying eight bottle of wine (also something I carried all the way to TX). Our tours ended at the famous winery cum resort called the “Domain Chandon” where I had intended to go for dinner, the previous night, but were just too tired to make it there. That place was the perfect place to end the tour, and had we not planned to go to Frisco city at night, we would have dined there for sure. In all, Napa was one of the most romantic places to be.
A long drive to Cupertino, CA and we were with family. Yogini atya had invited us over for dinner, and her parents had come over. It was fun to just relax and unwind, with a glass of chilled beer, and casual chat with nana, Ashwini’s grandfather. The chat was followed by awesome Desi food, which we, as usual, hogged on. As decided, we went to Lata Didi’s place at night, and she had to stay awake for us, which we felt bad about. But, there was no other alternative. The next day was our day to fly back to Houston and Tulsa respectively. And, it was also the day of the soccer world cup final. A hearty Indian lunch which Lata didi brought in from a restaurant, with the world cup final, was the grand finale of our grand trip.
To top it all, nothing pleased me more when my wife said “Thanks” for showing her a beautiful lake, desolate vastness, sand dunes, arid multi-color landscapes, huge trees, the sea, and beautiful wineries, all in one trip. Yes, it was our first trip together, and it was truly unforgettable.