Hum hai raahi pyar ke...Fir milenge chalte chalte...

Well everything is said and done... highlights have been broadcasted, memories are being shared. However our camping we did for 2 nights and 3 days will last in every ones memory for very very long time to go and I can not stop but think about every moment we shared again and again.

We, a group of 16 people, started on a Saturday morning, 2 and half hours late (usual IST hmmm!?) than the scheduled time! Tried very hard to ramp up everything the night before at around 10 or 11 PM but failed miserably. Instead of going to bed early, slept late at 2 AM in the morning, just to wake up after few hours, it was not a nightly sleep but a siesta. Freshened up, packed up, picked up and ran (indeed made the car to run :) to the common meeting point. Everyone gathered to start to our exciting camping destination which was about 5-6 hours away on an overly crowded brightly lit super sunny day. We all by now knew each other pretty well, however there were few who we met for the first time, though it did not feel like our first meet :) Some thing common in everyone of us connected us instantly…

As we were a big group of 16, we 5 girls and rest all guys... After meeting at this location we all gals gel’d so well that, we all wanted to join together and travel in one single car! But dropped the idea and let the guys to take the lead and we girls enjoy the ride! So 5 cars started in line one after another waving and smiling at each other… to meet after an hour at our designated meeting point to take a quick break and for one surprise which was secretly(??!!) planned.

I guess we were the last car to reach that meeting point at one of raider’s museum, or in plain words a cowboy museum! I saw all our guys and gals standing in a line from a distance and thought that they are waiting to enter the museum, only after reaching there we learned that they were waiting for the lone restroom available in that place :D, one after another done using the restroom and entered the museum to return the keys and to take a look at it. We found lots of cow boy hats, medals, pictures of raiders. The curator of the museum was delighted to see such a big crowd, of which half was outside the museum! She welcomed us to explore the museum and shared the details with each of us. We waved her good bye and came out to find bunch of chits to be picked up by every one of us, except for the drivers' of the car. Yes we were shuffling ourselves into different cars! That was one great thing we did to break the ice and which allowed us to know each other better. It was indeed exciting to pick the chit and find our driver! It was lot more fun than anticipated, we picked around 3 times to get the right car J and everyone boarded the car and headed to the next stop which was Yosemite national park’s visitor center!

Yosemite national park, a wilderness filled with tall pine or sequoia trees, wild animals [which kept few of us wide awake in the night :P] deep valleys, high granite mountains and full of melting snow resulting into gushing water falls at every half mile. The end of a spring and blossoming summer made our drive a pleasant one. Half dome, bridal veil and cascade water falls were just a feast to the eyes and to the heart. I wonder how the vastness and beauty of the nature make us feel so humble in front of it; fill the heart with such a warm feeling, which I can not express in words. Though our car was limping at many places due the over crowded traffic [This being the first long weekend of the summer, I guess whole of US was on the road!] the serene beauty of the nature and the melodious songs playing in the car enthralled every one of us and took us to a different world.

At last we reached the Yosemite’s visitor center to find no parking available, parked for long time in a NO parking zone with hazard lights on! Tried reaching others but signal was not available. We finished our lunch by taking turn to baby sit the car in the no parking zone. Some how we were able to sync up with others and decided to meet them all once for all at camp ground and then started towards Tioga pass, which had just opened 2 days back!

Tioga pass, which means “where it forks” I guess it connects the west valley to the east. According to NG magazine, this is one of the most scenic routes in Sierra. But, just after the lunch we started driving and what did I do :) took a nap…in between I was woken up and asked to look at the beauty of nature, I guess I saw but did not realize its beauty until I returned on the same route… the mountains and those milky frozen lakes were just breath taking...

[PS: This is just half of our first day events, tried hard to make it short :) but still ended up this long! will come up with remaining part , hopefully soon...]