Reporting from California

Well, I have heard about it for a long time. To be precise for 3 years. The wait was further extended due to an united flight's steering failure for a day. Finally, I have arrived in California. The first impression when driving around from the airport (with aarti) was the resemblance of the houses (in San Jose at least) to India. There was an air if India everywhere. So, I loved it.

With me around physical activity is needed to have fun. So we went to trek on the Mission Peak. It was a very good trip with lots of steep slopes and good sceneries (6 miles round trip). I had fun. Then we went to eat at a salad bar and took rest for the evening.

Today was even better. We left to San Francisco after a nice chocolate shake and lunch (courtesy aarti). The cable car ride was awesome. The sceneries visible (especially when you hang to the bars and are swinging were too good) were very nice. Then the general photos of all those was nice. After that we saw a bike shop and decided to bike to the San Fran Golden Gate Bridge (yes you read it right). The ride was very tough with steep uphills and lots of wind. We even biked on gravel which did not make things easy (esp for my companion). I loved some of those slopes. As soon as you reach on top of the slopes with considerably huge effort the kick you get is unexplainable. Then the views on offer were also very beautiful. So it was all worth it. Once we reached the bridge I was awed by the monstrous size! I biked on the bridge with feels of tremendous excitement and weird thoughts. I was wondering about the possibility of jumping into the sea! When I reached the pier God! it was so good. The width and height of the tower just was so amazing (I wish I had someone to provide me with more adjectives!). Then we biked back (round trip 9 miles). We visited Ghirardeli and Boudin's. Then, we walked on to pier 39. It was pleasant, and slowly the wind chill started taking effect. So it started getting really cold. But somehow we managed to walk to "Little Italy" (I don't have to tell why we went there). After considerably walking in the cold we reached an Italian restaurant that we decided to eat at. It was a nice place and I ordered "duck meat". Like everything else today, it was one of the best dishes I had. Then of course with my companion it is compulsory to follow dinner with ice cream (irrespective of the space in your tummy). So we went to gelato place and it was cool.

Now I have many more days to go and will see how I will spend it. I will be leaving for Stan tomorrow and probably meet some other friends later in the week. Lets see how everything goes. The start has been promising.