Everyday Lessons

mormon temple... we spent the last 3 days at Salt lake City. our temporary home was at lagoon campgrounds …not the best of campgrounds but served our purpose as it was close to the city that we wanted to visit. While at Salt Lake City, we visited the Mormon Church which looks magnificent and beautiful from outside…too bad that they don’t allow non-Mormons to view the temple from inside. Interestingly, we met a few people who were volunteering in the church..they spoke very passionately about their religion and asked us questions about our religion and beliefs…one of the young girl even challenged us about seeking the Truth through Mormonism. I did not relate very well with the beliefs that they mentioned to us but I surely do respect their immense Faith ….the Faith that helped the early settlers to cross miles to find a place not inhabited by anybody else and then making that place so prosperous…the Faith that helped them build this huge and beautiful temple in 1847…it is said that th...

papa's old home at salt lake city..

we have been camping in Moab, Utah (about 5 miles away from Arches national park)for the last two days and surprisingly, we have not done a lot of site-seeing….Amit is trying to catch up with his photo essay that he had planned and I am enjoying reading. We have been spending most of our time in library and cafes and have met some very interesting and kind people. It is fun to be in a new place…with no agenda…no plans…no destination….just be there…every moment. we did go for a short 3 mile hike to see the delicate arch. It was a fun-filled hike especially towards the end when it started raining….the rain and the smell of the rainand earth reminded me of the monsoons in india and brought back a lot of wonderful childhood memories!! Life is beautiful :-)

came across an article by Cheri huber - "One less act of violence" it is about making people aware of the other way of living i.e. being a vegeterian. apart from the usual argument about kindness to animals, it had some compelling facts as follows - - One lifelong vegetarian saves the lives of more than 1000 animals - Livestock production consumes more than half of all water used for all purposes in the US - It takes 55 square feet of Latin American land to produce enough grazing area for a single meat patty. -Hundreds of millions of tons of the world's grain harvest are fed to animals. Less than 5 million tons of grain could feed all the children who starve to death each year. - Over half a million newborn male chicks are thrown away every day because they are not useful for food. - The same amount of land can feed one meat-eater or 20 vegeterians. *** please don't think that i am advocating being a vegeterian over a non-vegeterian. what i am saying is that make an A...

we were driving back to our campsite in monument valley when we saw a spectacular sunset…the sun was just about to set …the sky was glowing red and the red sandstone looked redder and brighter….it was a beautiful moment that is etched into our memories….there were a lot of people already present at that place…and almost all of them had a camera in their hand and were busy clicking pictures…something felt very odd to me and amit…and we wondered if they are enjoying the sunset at that moment or if they were capturing it to enjoy it at some other time and space?! *** incidentally, amit decided to do a day without camera :-)

there is a laundry room in the campground where we are staying and we have decided to take full advantage of it…we have washed about two loads of clothes and while the machine is working on our clothes, we are catching up with our writing …life is great!! :-) *** there is a lot of beauty that we are seeing around us and a lot of inspiring and beautiful quotes/books that we are reading…it is time to cultivate the beauty within…by practicing…by not being afraid of situations where we would require to practice..or maybe by going towards a direction where we can practice the cultivation of what we cerebrally understand. Yes, beauty outside inspires the beauty within….

a very awe inspiring sight…there is a quarter of a mile hike to reach this bend and what you see simply cannot be put in words or captured by a camera..it is one of earth's natural wonders…you see the colorado river snaking it's path and it is difficult to imagine that this is the river that has carved so much of beauty while finding a path for itself….the giant rock or mountain in the middle (which is probably 240 million years old) stands proudly ..defying all natural forces that have tried to bring it down. we sat there and meditated in the beauty of this place watching the sun go down….there was absolute silence…the kind of silence that either scares you or inspires you…a large crow flew past where we were sitting…and we could hear the flapping of the wings…reminded me of the movie “winged migration”. Amit was in a dilemma here…whether to sit and absorb the beauty or to capture it with his camera…he eventually decided to do both.

we are at monument valley national park. it is breathtakingly beautiful!! we had planned on spending half a day here. instead we have decided to camp for the night. it is the middle of the afternoon here and is extremely hot. we have just finished putting our tent but it is too hot for hiking or site seeing. Amit decided to sleep on a picnic table (with a shade) and i decided to catch up with some reading. *** some interesting quotes from the book - “with one heart, bowing to the city of ten thousand buddhas” “wisdom is practiced, not discussed” “wisdom awaits discovery within our nature, but we have to cultivate it, uncover it, operate it” “the past is dead, the future is blind, where is now? As soon as they say “now is now”, it’s already gone.” “Changing bad habits is hard work. Attachments have momentum, they feel comfortable. Change required constant, steady pressure on the sore point, applying good dharma-medicine with patient courage until new, proper view replaces the old way of...

this place is an example of life’s resilience...the volcano (erupted sometime in 1260s) destroyed everything around it...all vegetation, plants, soil etc...what was left was inorganic rocks with no life. today, we see half the mountain alive with pine trees that have adapted themselves to grow in such a soil condition...you also see some flowers standing proudly amongst the black cinders. where there is no other life, you still see lichens growing on the black inorganic charred rocks...lichens are algae and fungus growing together in a symbiotic relation....in turn, they help converting these inorganic rocks to organic soil..helping new life to spur. isn't it amazing and wonderful!!

signs (on west fork trail) to indicate that we are on the right track i.e. on the right trail.... i was wondering if life gives us signs to tell us that we are on the right path....or is there a right path?!!

we spent the day at sedona …we hiked at the west fork trail…it is the most beautiful hike that I have ever done and I recommend it to anybody who is planning to visit sedona. The hike is by the side of the oak creek river…the river bed is made of smooth red rocks and you can wade in the cool and clear water of the creek…we heard sounds of a lot of different birds…though we could not spot any :-(….needless to say - amit went berserk with clicking pictures of this place…

06/17/2005 Destination – Sedona (from Casa Grande) Estimated time as per AAA guide – 3 hours Time taken by us to reach sedona – 7 hrs !! we left casa grande at about 8:00am as scheduled. amit had this strong urge to eat Indian food and he was very sure to find a good Indian restaurant in phoenix…on reaching phoenix (at around 930 am), we were able to find a couple of Indian places (amit called a college time friend who had studied in university of California to help him find a good place) only to realize that lunch is not served till 11:30 am!! With long faces and empty stomach, we decided to head forward….and had no choice but to stick to our cereal and bread diet … we reached sedona at around 3:00pm….it was a Friday… we did not have any reservation since we did not expect the place to be very popular ….we headed for the oak creek campground about which we had read quite a lot and we had made up our mind to camp beside the creek…this is a campsite 20 miles north of sedona…on reaching ...

we went to sri yogananda's self realization fellowship temple in encinitas. the temple was closed but the garden and the hermitage was open. these are beautiful gardens right on the side of the ocean and have a very beautiful view of the ocean. we could feel a lot of positive energy in that place...amit and i meditated in the gardens for sometime and it was very rejuvenating. ***while meditating i realized that when i was experiencing being in the moment and if i started putting it in words in my mind, the experience would just vanish. during our visit to srf gardens, i read a passage from “present moment wonderful moment” by Thich Nhat Nanh. it was about practicing mindfulness by using “gathas” (“gathas” are short verses which can be recited during dialy activities to practice indfulness) i read the gatha for getting up in the morning which is as follows – “waking up this morning, i smile. twenty-four brand new hours are before me. i vow to live fully in each moment and to look at...

amit really wanted to visit the san diego zoo...but then we do not support the idea of caging the animals so in the spirit of being the change we wish to see in the world, we gave up the idea of going to the zoo. instead, we decided to check out the san diego wild animal park. we left the san diego motel at around 11:00am...stopped at a very cool cafe to check our emails. the cafe had some very beautiful pictures...amit took some photos of the pictures (which he will be uploading shortly). Anyway, we headed for the wild animal park (where the animals are kept in the open) a little north east of san diego. the park has some very exotic animals that are kept in the open habitat and it seems that the park authorities collaborate with a lot of countries to save some of the endangered species. needless to say amit’s third eye (his camera !) was constantly at work at the park. there was nothing that could be missed by his third eye. so look out for some cool pictures. some of the attraction...

we found that people in mexico to be quite friendly and polite. there was one shop that we went to have tortas (Mexican sandwich) and we had a tough time explaining to them that we don't want meat. after explaining to 3 different people, we still got a torta with meat. We, then showed them what was it in the sandwich that we did not want they made a new torta for us with an amused look on their face. infact, we stood right next to the chef just to make sure that he does not add any non-veg stuff in the torta. the 2nd torta came out to be great but what was greater was the smile with which it was made and served. All the while when amit was in mexico, he kept trying to speak Spanish..he thinks that anthing that ends with a "ion" becomes Spanish. so that is how talked to me for two days :-) (when amit heard ashish interact with sadie in gujrati, amit started speaking gujarati with sadie and according to amit gujratti is anything that ends with a "che")..

as soon as we entered mexico and parked our car, amit realized that he has left the car key inside!! this was our little adventure on 13th june...amit is writing more details about this incident on his blog. here you can see the smile on amit's face when the door to our car was opened and the key found!!

day 1 - 06/10/2005 we said our goodbyes to shalini and gaurav and headed for stanford university to meet Tristan, who was going to be spending the first day of our road trip with us. he had planned a hike for us at bigsur. we met Tristan at about 2pm and started heading towards bigsur. while in the car, amit and i tried our level best to synch the ipod with the radio but as expected both of us couldn’t get the damn thing to work :-) we plan to call for tech support albeit gauri or dada when ever we get a chance to get their expert opinion. believe it or not but we took 7 hours to reach bigsur. as per tristan's calculations, we should have been there within 2 hours but somehow; it just took forever to reach to our desired destination. we all were not sure as to what was the reason for us being so late...we were so engrossed in our conversation that we just didn't notice the traffic that was barely moving....then we overshot Salinas and lost about an hour in that...and of course,...

breakfast at bigsur...