Flagstaff - Destination Grand Canyon!

lesson learned : when you don't have your own transport, either you should have a lot of time at your disposal or you should plan the trip to every detail

well... you can imagine that our trip has nicely turned into something very different from what we expected! though it took my colleague some time, he finally got himself convinced to the idea of visiting Grand Canyon. i've been toying with the idea of traveling by greyhounds. obviously, i could not have found any better opportunity than this one to make it a reality. all i checked was nps website for Grand Canyon and did not bother to check further details. i've been little more preoccupied in this trip

first bus from phoenix to flagstaff is at 7:40 am. we were ready by 6:30 am, however my colleague got an interesting idea of reaching the greyhounds terminal by local bus. i let him figure out the details... simple funda while traveling, never say no to your partners! i simply followed him till he gave up and changed his mind to book the transport from the front desk. by then it was too late and we missed the 7:40 am bus. the next one was only at 9:10 am so we assembled again around 8:15 am. this time we did not repeat the same mistake.

as we reached the terminal there was one guy from nepal trying to catch up with us. he wanted us to buy tickets for him till flagstaff !!! i got zapped... why would i want to do that? spending $62 on a stranger did not sound logical to me. i am not that rich either. he was persistent and stood with us in the queue till we reached the counter. no wonder why we find people from indian subcontinent living abroad to be little hostile. it reminds me of the old fellow who cheated us at chicago airport when we were looking for a calling card on our first visit to usa.

being at the greyhounds terminal did not give me a good feel at all... adding to that i had realized that i was not carrying any type of photo identity card. environment around feels unsafe and no identity if things were to go wrong... my colleague was more worried than i... prepared myself mentally to face the worst case scenario! it was quite comfortable inside... did not take out my camera all the way, just wanted to stay away from unnecessary attention

as we crossed the city, landscape appeared to be quite interesting... all i could find around was cacti... for some distance i thought it could be some man made landscaping. very soon i realized that it is beyond man's capabilities... it was wildly beautiful, typical of nature. after few hours the whole landscape got changed into something very pleasant and beautiful of different kind... we reached flagstaff.

first thing we did was to check at the counter, how we can reach grand canyon. the guy at the counter gave me a weird look and told me that it is 80 miles from there! for the first time i realized my mistake, till that moment i did not check the route map. there is another travel company who operates shuttle service between flagstaff and grand canyon, he gave us the address of that place. we walked around that whole area to locate the address, but in vain. finally we walked into a motel to check whether they can help us to get to that address. after waiting for few minutes there appeared a beautiful lady who offered to help us. she was very cordial and called up the travel company to check the schedule. we came to know that there is one shuttle starting at 3:30pm which would take little more than 2 hours to reach there and will return back on the same day after 15 minutes break. that was the only option we had, we had to let go as our return bus was at 7:40pm

my colleague jay wanted to try kfc so we started searching for that, after 15 minutes walk we spotted the same. it was a heavy lunch, yummy but very different. jay wanted to check out target stores, i joined him unwillingly. we walked out after couple of hours with a lot of stuff, he spent $0 and i swiped the card for around $200. well, it felt good to buy for others! we returned to the bus terminal and sat outside a book stores. weather was pleasant and it was nice to watch all the interesting bikes zoom by

we reached the terminal by 7:00pm. there was one dazzling beauty standing in the queue. she was slim with blonde hair and dressed in a white frock filled with black dots. i wondered how she was carrying such big bags with her fragile hands. i could not stop looking at her till we got down at phoenix. i was so impressed by the way she carried herself around and she seemed to be well organized. if it were in india, i definitely would have tried to catch up. overall the delay of one and half hour was well spent ;-) at one of the stop she got down, i was looking through the windows to get a last glimpse of her. after a while i could not trace her and gave up, to my surprise she was standing right in front of me inside the bus... wow!

photos

Phoenix

phoenix... i've been fascinated by that word... "A legendary Arabian bird said to periodically burn itself to death and emerge from the ashes as a new phoenix; according to most versions only one phoenix lived at a time and it renewed itself every 500 years". i had to travel to phoenix for a week at a very short notice to attend one summit. i was foolish not to carry my driving license with me. however, i did not feel that pinch as we had to spend most of the days at work and also the weather was extremely hot, could not have dared to venture out. touching part of the whole trip was the drive from hotel to airport on the last day of the stay!

i had asked for the transport to be available by 6:30 am. i was late as usual, reached the front desk only at 6:50 am, thought that i would have to pay extra to the driver for keeping him wait. interestingly there was no vehicle waiting...

after waiting for about 15 minutes one interesting guy showed up... he offered to carry my check-in baggage to the vehicle, that was my first surprise! i would never expect such thing especially in usa. he started with my surname, saying that he was contemplating that i must be from asia... india, pakistan, nepal or bangladesh. i confirmed to him that i am from india. he was overflowing with warmth! he loves india and a big fan of indian music. he was very appreciative about various indian actors and musicians. he also was humming old songs from old hindi films.

i got curious to know about his origin and how he developed a taste for india. he was born in somaila. when he was a teenager he managed to convince his dad to take him to india, in '80s. they visited bombay and few other places. he used to have a good collection of indian music. i was amazed by his respect to indian traditional values.

during the conversation he talked about the importance of retaining the traditional and cultural values. he sounded very upset when he talked about the current trends in indian movies. showing off too much skin... incomprehensible lyrics... adulterated music tunes! it made me think, 'how many times do we care about the rapidly changing value system?... someone far from east africa and living in usa is worried... do we bother?'

the trip came to an end as we reached the airport, but his thoughts kept on lingering in my mind... i do not know what is indian!!! one may presume that so & so is only indian, but the reality is that the other extreme is also indian...

Dream Ride - Tragedy

some times 'yes' will screw up all plans... one late evening i've got a call from office asking me to take up a role to transform few areas of our business. i should have considered the time lines before i said 'yes'   :(

now, i'll have to cancel my leave plans and reschedule the dream ride... i probably would have considered this as a compromise, if only i am not passionate about transformation   :)