Day 2 and 3 - LA, Santa Monica and the Canyon lands of Arizona

This next update has taken time to come along. That’s because I’ve barely had a chance to reflect and write about my travels. It’s perhaps a function of having a lot of people in the group with just enough time to get in some sleep in the plan, leave alone writing. But a lot of ground has been covered, literally and metaphorically in the past week or so for which I’ve been on the road. I’m on my way to St. Louis, MO right now. In the time since the last blog I’ve seen a lot, starting with the Hollywood sign in LA. I’ve been amazed by the spread of LA as seen from the Observatory opposite the Hollywood sign. One road in particular seems to just travel straight to the horizon seemingly never taking a curve. We also went to the Hollywood boulevard and saw the stars on the walk of fame as well as the Chinese theatre – not a part of the trip I really cared about so much. LA also had many Indian buffets; we had lunch at one. That was it for LA – we went on to the Santa Monica beach and enjoyed some beach volleyball till it got dark. Then it was time to drive to Las Vegas for the night. All this was on the 28^th of December.

Vegas was just a layover for the night so that we could rest and be ready for the drive to the city of Page, AZ the next day. This is Canyon country; close to Page is the Antelope Canyon system that reminds you of the movie 127 hours. We did a tour of the Upper Canyon and clicked some fantastic pics. What I also remember is how cold my feet were since I went into the cold Canyon with just my floaters on having decided that I didn’t want to wear my heavy hiking shoes on such a beautiful day! The tour operators take you along a dry and dusty river bed that leads to the mouth of the canyon from where on the guide helps you navigate the narrow canyon as she talks about the canyon’s history and shows you a naturally carved sculpture that weirdly approximates Abraham Lincoln’s facial features very well. There is occasional flooding that results from heavy rain higher up; this can fill up to 30 feet high in the canyon.

After traveling back on the rickety, diesel-fuelled, tarpaulin-walled pick-up truck that we sat in the back of through that same dust road, I had sand in every open pore of the body. For a small town such as Page –established in 1957 - there was a great Mexican restaurant right next to the tour operator’s building. There was even an Indian/Thai place that seemed to be closed. Someone mentioned that it had been shut for 3 months. We ate Mexican; the salsa that came with the complimentary nachos was so good that I was half-sated by the time the meal itself came. I think I had a cheese quesadilla with something else that I can’t remember. Then we went to see the Horseshoe bend.

The Colorado River has achieved some magnificent geological feats. It has carved many canyons including the Grand Canyon. At this location near Page, it takes a 270 degree bend in the Glen Canyon with a 1000 feet drop to the river. It is simply a stunning scene. The river snakes around the huge rock face in almost a perfect horseshoe shape. The landscape is desolate all around with three tall smoke chimneys close to the town in the distance being the only sign of civilization discounting for the trail that leads to the bend view and a single shed at the head of the trail.

Taking in that beautiful scene at Sunset I was done for the day. While some guys went out bowling in Page, I stayed in and had pizza for dinner. The Grand Canyon beckoned the next day.

A trip for the ages - it starts here

A road trip across the continental United States is one of the most exciting things one could ever do. And I embarked on just such a voyage this week. As I see it, a daily record of places I visit and how they make me feel is a great way to document this for the future. So here is the first one of quite a few to come.

From my haunt in Berkeley, I traveled to Santa Clara where my truly interesting and talented roommate, Aravind Gayam’s, friends live and work. They are all engineers working in the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley after having graduated from the University at Buffalo, NY and a few other universities in the US. So this is a large group of around 10 Indian engineers in their mid-20s on a once in a lifetime trip across the US. Their friends flew into the bay area from Philadelphia, Fairfax and Wisconsin to start off from the west coast toward the east.

So we started bright and early on the 27^th of December towards Santa Barbara. En route lay the Big Sur, the most beautiful drive I’ve ever experienced with the cold, blue pacific in its various hues on one side and a rugged mountainous terrain on the other side as the road wriggles up, down and sideways to just stay within the comfort zone. There were great picture opportunities here.

A word about traveling long distance on the road. The minimum you need is a big, gas-guzzling SUV. An RV is the best option, but also really expensive. The group is in two SUVs, one larger than the other but both very comfortable. I haven’t felt the effects of a long day on the road but its early days yet so things might change.

Bidding goodbye to the Big Sur, we drove to the beach town of Oceano that’s home to Pismo beach. The guys wanted to ride ATVs on the sand dunes here. I got some good rest in the car. We had dinner early in the evening, at a surprisingly good Thai place called Divine Thai in this small beach town and then drove down to Santa Barbara with the music completely dominating conversation in contrast to the day.

As I write this we are on the road to Los Angeles after a good night’s sleep. California truly has magnificent weather; there is rarely an ugly day without sunshine. While the Indian monsoon has its own intense magnetic pull that I miss, the California experience is quite easy to get used to. It is always nice out here. That shall not be the case in Denver, Colorado where we are headed in a few days.

It was a great start to a promising journey. Although I’d been to the Big Sur before it never ceases to evoke wonder and amazement. The nature of road trips, especially ones with many people, is to offer fleeting glimpses of beautiful landscapes rather than build familiarity with places you’d want to stay at for a length of time. I must confess that I’m prone to taking everything in slowly rather than rushing through multiple ‘tourist spots.’ Still, it is a trade-off that I’m willing to make given all that I’ll be able to see.

Anna, Arvind and AAP

Anna Hazare, the social activist who considers himself a Gandhian, has had a hard time adjusting to the meteoric rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) formed by his one-time 'disciple' Arvind Kejriwal. Anna, as he is referred to almost everywhere, has pursued many interesting methods of affecting social reform in his native village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra; not all of these methods were non-violent. Quite apart from the prime drivers of his agenda, what I find most intriguing about him are the pronouncements - delivered with a wagging finger and a stern expression, reminiscent of the headmaster of a high school - that keep coming out of him. Of late, these have been laced with more than a little bitterness towards Kejriwal, the estranged follower who has gone on to be very successful in the Delhi assembly elections of 2013. From prohibiting the use of his likeness by the AAP to ordering Gopal Rai, an AAP member, out of a public meeting held in Ralegan Siddhi when a tiff ensued between Rai and former Indian army chief, V.K. Singh, another political mercenary who perhaps nurtures political ambitions of his own; to his apparent forgetfulness of Kejriwal's role in the 2011 anti-corruption movement when Hazare thanked the political class for finally providing him with the same Lokpal bill that he considered worthless only 2 years back; to his refusal to attend Kejriwal's swearing-in ceremony as Chief Minister of Delhi, Anna Hazare has looked quite petulant, certainly very un-Gandhi like. 

I do not wish to demean Hazare; he seems to have contributed significantly to the well-being of his village with most of his village backing his methods. What I do find strange is how a person who says that he is a Gandhian and puts the interests of the nation first can be so mean when someone he trusted so much achieves some measure of success, even if it's in the arena of politics that Hazare has long derided. It makes you wonder about the limits of relying on a Gandhian figure when that particular combination of political shrewdness, professional training and moral clarity that was so essential to Gandhi's success is so lacking in such figures. Kejriwal, on the other hand, has been an astoundingly astute exponent of the art of politics. Anna Hazare instinctive aversion to politics is hard to square with the idea of democracy. The representatives of the people are supposed to be responsible to the people, and when there is a real break between the ideal of politics and the reality of it's practice, there needs to be a cleansing both within and without. Such movements have happened at critical junctures in Indian democracy - Jayaprakash Narayan's movement is the best known example of it at a national scale. But Hazare would rather always lecture politicians from outside, seeing politics itself as an inherently corrupting choice rather than the empowering one that it should be. While opinions regarding Kejriwal's model of participative and consultative democracy can be divided, the anger at a broken system that pays no heed to the voice of the common man has correctly found a universal outlet in his party. His diagnoses are right even if not every solution proposed may work. To his credit, he has been honest enough to admit those limitations. These are only early days; the danger of political power going to the head is very real for anyone, even the legislators of AAP. Slaying the politician-demon when the AAP did not have to work with the current the system of governance was easier than making that same system work for providing the good governance that was promised.