Let me write this post differently... so far I have been fitting photos between texts, and this time I am going to fit in some text between the photographs.... This is about the two days of being in the US that I did not know about...
The planning for the camping and the drive had started a couple of days back, with me trying to find out where to rent the tents from and the car from... I booked and canceled and booked and canceled the car booking a number of times, before we finalized the Enterprise Rentals for a compact car...
Pritam had already made the bookings for the camping site and the rafting and this was going to be an exciting weekend for sure... for two reasons, 1 that I was going to drive and second I was going to a place that I had never been to before, oh and 3 because I was camping which I had never done, and 4 because I would not have accompalished the not so common Rafting in two continents tag :P (Aro, Tushar, Subbu, Deepu... guys are you jealous :D)
The initial plan was that these guys would pick me up from my apartment saturday morning but we figured that its going to waste time so I packed my bags and went along on friday itself to Pritam's place... we had a list of things to do and the one on the top of the list was to get the rental car... The girl at enterprise happily upgraded us to a larger car and gave us a weekend deal which basically saved us atleast $40 per day for the 3 days we were renting the car for...
We were just sitting when one of the group said that we should leave friday night itself, there was no reason to wait till morning to drive to Wisconsin... The idea sounded better than trying to wake up at 4 in the morning... so i quickly went to bed (This was around 7 that we decided this and I had 3-4 hours to catch a nap)... Pritam woke me up at 11 and we were ready to move by 0100 hrs...
Next I know is that we drove and we drove and drove... The guy at the camp said that we should throw our GPS out of the window because its not going to take us to the camp, rather might just make us loose our way :D however I had the google map for the nearest town and then a smaller map for the way from Lakewood to the Kosir's camp site next to river Peshtigo... so partly the map helped and the rest we managed with the GPS... also did manage to sleep for a couple of hours when Pritam took over the driving bit from me...
These are when we took a photography break on the Highway 32... the light was great and the weather wonderful... and we could not resist stopping for a while and just admiring the country side... The gentleman in the picture below came out of his barn and gave us company for a while and talked about the town etc... It was not very common for him to find strangers parked near his place and roaming around... and that too Indians :D
We reached lakewood without getting much lost, but had to call the camp to find some directions to the site... was not too tough and we were at the camp in another 45 minutes...
Now came the challenge... none of us had ever put up a tent before and the instructions did not seem to be enough for the entire thing to be building up from that bag... we still tried and after a hardship of about 30 minutes and misunderstanding the instructions, we were able to put the tent up exactly the way it was supposed to be... the second tent took less time and the third one was done up in 10 minutes flat !!! Meanwhile the ipod and the speakers were also set up and soft hindi music had started playing in our camp site...
Mornings are time for breakfast, and because we had a lot of bread and strawberry jam and haldiram namkeens and biscuits... the first meal at the camp was not a problem at all... infact it was nice eating in the (almost) wild like that... None of us except one had mobile signals on their cell and it was a good feeling to be honest :)
When we finally decided to move away from the camp and explore the area, we realised that there was an annual parade going on.... a small one but a nice one where a lot of people from the town participated... I think it had to do something with the fire department of the county as a lot of fire engines were a part of it....
It had some things that can cause fire too, as you see in the picture below :)
We decided to turn back and explore the place on foot before we take the cars out and go to the waterfall that we were supposed to go to... and below is what I clicked on the small 45 minute walk around the camp....
We finally managed to get out of the camp, also managed to get lost and find our way back towards the camp and then towards the waterfall that we were trying to go to...
But this was not a waterfall but a small park with some bridges on the river... I was happy to be there, took my camera out and went shooting again, while the rest of the gang was happy exploring the place in the other direction too...
And when there is water and there are boys, it does not take much to get in and have a ball !!! so there were we enjoying the warm water stream and being the kids we always miss in ourselves....
We were then told that we were not too far away from the waterfall either, and we decided that the second part of the fun was going to be at the waterfall... so the guys just hopped on in the cars... in watever form they were and we drove to the waterfall some 5 miles away :)
While the rest of the gang jumped into the water rightaway to have their second half of taking a fun bath, i decided to call it quits and just walked around taking some pictures.... check out the place like I did below :)
We left the Goodman park in about an hours time and I was very very happy to see this part of the US... typically one would associate US with tall buildings and busy downtowns and here we were in the middle of nowhere, with our phones not working and cars being seen at the rate of 1 every 30-45 minutes....
Back at the camp in the evening, we did not have much to do so we decided to just walk around the camp... there were 26 camp sites in the camp and most of them were occupied.... small tents, big tents, family tents, campers and jeeps, everything was there....
The bus that Kosir's use to ferry rafters in the Peshtigo river camp...
We were just hanging out at our camping site not doing anything... the picture below is our camp site (#10)... you can see our 3 tents and the two cars parked...
No camping is complete without a campfire and we had made all arrangements for it too... got some extra firewood to ensure that the fire stays till we manage to stay awake... I was pretty tired from my day so I decided to call it a day around 2200 and the rest of the guys I guess were awake till midnight before they decided to sleep off too...
I woke up at 0400 hrs to pee, and when I got out of my sleeping bag ( man it was tough or tough to get out of it in pitch dark) and the tent I saw one of the most spectacular sights ever... Second to Pangong Tso I must say... the sky was studded with stars and no two stars were more than 1 mm away from each other... absolutely brightly lit sky this was... I forgot to pee too :D and kept looking at it for a while before I realised that nature was calling for something else other than just stars as well :)
We all woke up around 0900 hrs in the morning and lazyly just sat around not doing anything... we had to read the rafting campsite around 1400 hrs and had a lot of time on hand so there was no hurry of any sort...
These two girls in the picture below were roaming all around the camp on their miniature bike... very cute girls they were...
I decided to pick up my lenses and take pictures around the camp again... here is what I clicked...
And then there was time to take pictures of the gang I was travelling with... so here we go :)
We finally drove out around 12 and reached the other site in abot 45 minutes... did not have much to do except just hang around the laaaaaaaaaaaaarge open spaces and I could not think of anything but to take out my camera and take more pictures...
We went out for rafting around 1430 hrs and well.. what can I say except that I love Rishikesh and I love the Ganges... there was just one rapid ( grade IV) and we did that twice... thats it !!! lets just forget it !!! ( so guys, don't be jealous ! this was more of a water park ride that I did )
Suman dislocated his shoulder while he was being pulled up on the raft... now this was some stupid thing which I must mention here... the guys were pulled up with their hands, which increased the probability of an injury for obvious reasons... our guides in Rishikesh always say that pull a guy up holding the life jacket and not anything else...
The instructor arranged for Suman to be taken to the hospital where he was taken care of just fine... the picture below is in the hospital parking lot...
And this is Suman, who looks more treated than he was actually... not sure why all these wires were fixed to him.... he slept most of his way back home though... I drove half the distance and then Pritam took over....
Got back only by 0300 hrs and managed to sleep for 4 hours before we returned the car, and then the tents and reached office... All in all a wonderful weekend... something that I would like to remember for a long time :)
God bless !!!
The planning for the camping and the drive had started a couple of days back, with me trying to find out where to rent the tents from and the car from... I booked and canceled and booked and canceled the car booking a number of times, before we finalized the Enterprise Rentals for a compact car...
Pritam had already made the bookings for the camping site and the rafting and this was going to be an exciting weekend for sure... for two reasons, 1 that I was going to drive and second I was going to a place that I had never been to before, oh and 3 because I was camping which I had never done, and 4 because I would not have accompalished the not so common Rafting in two continents tag :P (Aro, Tushar, Subbu, Deepu... guys are you jealous :D)
The initial plan was that these guys would pick me up from my apartment saturday morning but we figured that its going to waste time so I packed my bags and went along on friday itself to Pritam's place... we had a list of things to do and the one on the top of the list was to get the rental car... The girl at enterprise happily upgraded us to a larger car and gave us a weekend deal which basically saved us atleast $40 per day for the 3 days we were renting the car for...
We were just sitting when one of the group said that we should leave friday night itself, there was no reason to wait till morning to drive to Wisconsin... The idea sounded better than trying to wake up at 4 in the morning... so i quickly went to bed (This was around 7 that we decided this and I had 3-4 hours to catch a nap)... Pritam woke me up at 11 and we were ready to move by 0100 hrs...
Next I know is that we drove and we drove and drove... The guy at the camp said that we should throw our GPS out of the window because its not going to take us to the camp, rather might just make us loose our way :D however I had the google map for the nearest town and then a smaller map for the way from Lakewood to the Kosir's camp site next to river Peshtigo... so partly the map helped and the rest we managed with the GPS... also did manage to sleep for a couple of hours when Pritam took over the driving bit from me...
These are when we took a photography break on the Highway 32... the light was great and the weather wonderful... and we could not resist stopping for a while and just admiring the country side... The gentleman in the picture below came out of his barn and gave us company for a while and talked about the town etc... It was not very common for him to find strangers parked near his place and roaming around... and that too Indians :D
We reached lakewood without getting much lost, but had to call the camp to find some directions to the site... was not too tough and we were at the camp in another 45 minutes...
Now came the challenge... none of us had ever put up a tent before and the instructions did not seem to be enough for the entire thing to be building up from that bag... we still tried and after a hardship of about 30 minutes and misunderstanding the instructions, we were able to put the tent up exactly the way it was supposed to be... the second tent took less time and the third one was done up in 10 minutes flat !!! Meanwhile the ipod and the speakers were also set up and soft hindi music had started playing in our camp site...
Mornings are time for breakfast, and because we had a lot of bread and strawberry jam and haldiram namkeens and biscuits... the first meal at the camp was not a problem at all... infact it was nice eating in the (almost) wild like that... None of us except one had mobile signals on their cell and it was a good feeling to be honest :)
When we finally decided to move away from the camp and explore the area, we realised that there was an annual parade going on.... a small one but a nice one where a lot of people from the town participated... I think it had to do something with the fire department of the county as a lot of fire engines were a part of it....It had some things that can cause fire too, as you see in the picture below :)
We decided to turn back and explore the place on foot before we take the cars out and go to the waterfall that we were supposed to go to... and below is what I clicked on the small 45 minute walk around the camp....
We finally managed to get out of the camp, also managed to get lost and find our way back towards the camp and then towards the waterfall that we were trying to go to...
But this was not a waterfall but a small park with some bridges on the river... I was happy to be there, took my camera out and went shooting again, while the rest of the gang was happy exploring the place in the other direction too...
And when there is water and there are boys, it does not take much to get in and have a ball !!! so there were we enjoying the warm water stream and being the kids we always miss in ourselves....
We were then told that we were not too far away from the waterfall either, and we decided that the second part of the fun was going to be at the waterfall... so the guys just hopped on in the cars... in watever form they were and we drove to the waterfall some 5 miles away :)
While the rest of the gang jumped into the water rightaway to have their second half of taking a fun bath, i decided to call it quits and just walked around taking some pictures.... check out the place like I did below :)
We left the Goodman park in about an hours time and I was very very happy to see this part of the US... typically one would associate US with tall buildings and busy downtowns and here we were in the middle of nowhere, with our phones not working and cars being seen at the rate of 1 every 30-45 minutes....
Back at the camp in the evening, we did not have much to do so we decided to just walk around the camp... there were 26 camp sites in the camp and most of them were occupied.... small tents, big tents, family tents, campers and jeeps, everything was there....
The bus that Kosir's use to ferry rafters in the Peshtigo river camp...
We were just hanging out at our camping site not doing anything... the picture below is our camp site (#10)... you can see our 3 tents and the two cars parked...
No camping is complete without a campfire and we had made all arrangements for it too... got some extra firewood to ensure that the fire stays till we manage to stay awake... I was pretty tired from my day so I decided to call it a day around 2200 and the rest of the guys I guess were awake till midnight before they decided to sleep off too...
I woke up at 0400 hrs to pee, and when I got out of my sleeping bag ( man it was tough or tough to get out of it in pitch dark) and the tent I saw one of the most spectacular sights ever... Second to Pangong Tso I must say... the sky was studded with stars and no two stars were more than 1 mm away from each other... absolutely brightly lit sky this was... I forgot to pee too :D and kept looking at it for a while before I realised that nature was calling for something else other than just stars as well :)We all woke up around 0900 hrs in the morning and lazyly just sat around not doing anything... we had to read the rafting campsite around 1400 hrs and had a lot of time on hand so there was no hurry of any sort...
These two girls in the picture below were roaming all around the camp on their miniature bike... very cute girls they were...
I decided to pick up my lenses and take pictures around the camp again... here is what I clicked...
And then there was time to take pictures of the gang I was travelling with... so here we go :)
We finally drove out around 12 and reached the other site in abot 45 minutes... did not have much to do except just hang around the laaaaaaaaaaaaarge open spaces and I could not think of anything but to take out my camera and take more pictures...
We went out for rafting around 1430 hrs and well.. what can I say except that I love Rishikesh and I love the Ganges... there was just one rapid ( grade IV) and we did that twice... thats it !!! lets just forget it !!! ( so guys, don't be jealous ! this was more of a water park ride that I did )Suman dislocated his shoulder while he was being pulled up on the raft... now this was some stupid thing which I must mention here... the guys were pulled up with their hands, which increased the probability of an injury for obvious reasons... our guides in Rishikesh always say that pull a guy up holding the life jacket and not anything else...
The instructor arranged for Suman to be taken to the hospital where he was taken care of just fine... the picture below is in the hospital parking lot...
And this is Suman, who looks more treated than he was actually... not sure why all these wires were fixed to him.... he slept most of his way back home though... I drove half the distance and then Pritam took over....
Got back only by 0300 hrs and managed to sleep for 4 hours before we returned the car, and then the tents and reached office... All in all a wonderful weekend... something that I would like to remember for a long time :)
God bless !!!
Brilliant account as always!
ReplyDeleteI so wish in our skydiving trip we had taken the car and ventured out somewhere while we waited for our turn. But I am glad you got to see this part of the US.
Back in India, I used to click people and their lifestyles, here I have become more connected to nature for sure. The waters, the canyons, and oceans, the huge trees and not to forget the brilliant fall colors.
Nice post.
yee to full commentary hai about your trip :)
ReplyDeleteI liked some of the fired snaps, specially the black beauty ONE :) it would be nice to see her on your Chaya chitralaye :)
Wishing a fast recovery for the person with shoulder displacement, too bad but I guess someone got all the pleasure to drive :), to glory :) achiii hai :)
goes with the saying "WHEN YOU DESIRE SOMETHING THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRES IN FAVOR FOR IT", aisa hi kuch hogaya yanha paar looks like :)
Given the empty land and time available here getting connected to nature is quite natural...glad you got to see this part of US too..
Remember C&H, and the time they spend wondering in such Backwood forests :), :D ...It came from this Land only :)
Glad u had a good trip and yes, too many snaps spoil the post!
Just kidding :)
nice post........
ReplyDeletehow stupid of the instructor to pull suman through his hands.......even the stupid guy with whom i did rafting in kullu knew to pull through life jackets.....anyways hope he is fine soon :)
well, me J....u r doing quite a many things that i would love to do and i hardly have any time these days :(
good pics, u seem to shooting landscapes and macro well these days :)
# Kshitiz...
ReplyDeletethanks bro...
i wish... the stupid girl at the counter should have given us a realistic time frame to get on board !!! but never mind :) I kinda took care of the driving in the no mans land on this trip !!!
I agree to the availability of nature here... I am looking forward to the fall colors :)
# Tanu...
long comment eh ! :)
Black Beauty on Chaya Chitralaya :) ok !!! aaj hi lo phir to :)
Suman theek hai abhi, the instructor was stupid !!!
God has been kind to me always... i get what I start off for :) so thank you Uncle you are the best !!
too may snaps kahan hai ? sirf 46 hain :D
# Deepu...
thanks bro...
yes the guy was stupid... they need to be brought to Rishikesh for a training I guess :P Suman is ok, the doctors put the shoulder right back in and he is recovering fast !!! J mat ho mere bhai, you do something that I wanted to, I do something that you wanted to :) and we both look up to each other that way :)
god bless !!!
Thank you about the comment on pictures... it feels good specially coming from you !!! Lanscapes and Flowers etc are all that I can click here... not sure if the people would be that eager to be shot at :)
Seems like someone is having a great time there...great..Touch wood..God bless...
ReplyDeleteA B'ful place indeed...calm and serene...now I am "J" too...wish could be at such a place too...lolz...
But must compliment ;Outstanding Photography as always...though liked them all but to mention i really liked the captured sun , peeping through the trees...and that b'ful cottage...and this lovely white flowers...Good work!!!!
Does this mean that you are going to boast everytime we mention rafting?
ReplyDeleteActually, I am not jealous after reading about Suman. Maybe the action was taken casually (when most accidents happen). Anyway, hope he is ok now.
bhai ... badhiya pics...
ReplyDeletem glad u r ernjoying in US and making the most of it.
# Vaishali...
ReplyDeleteyou bet !!! thanks...
This place was very beautiful no doubt... would like to walk around in such a place on my own sometime...
thanks for the compliment..
# Subbu...
nahin... not this experience atleast... unless I do it somewhere else and its fkking crazy :D
This was more of a damper... one rapid and thats it... cha !!!
Suman incident was unfortunate !!! the instructor is expected to do things right... he did not..
# Lalit...
good to see you here bro...
Yes, I am making the most of whatever I can !!!
sounds like a lovely trip!!..n great pics as always!! Here in Canada too the open spaces are lots n plenty n not too far to get to which is the best part!..am looking forward to fall now which is absolutely gorgeous here!
ReplyDeleteSee if u can make it this side of the border too!
# Gunjan..
ReplyDeletethanks a ton...
yea I am looking forward to the fall colors too :)
that side of the border needs a visa and all... not sure if can make it this time...
someother time maybe :/
Yep, this is the US that not many know about :) And there are some really large farmlands in the midwest, farm hi farm as far as you can see! And the people are so warm and friendly!
ReplyDeleteHope you are around to see the fall colors! That is such a treat!
Sorry about suman's shoulder, but I have the same question as you, why did he need those tubes?
#Kashmira...
ReplyDeletehappy to be in and capture this part of the US... very...
I don't know... Suman really did not need all those tubes and crap... but i guess just to be sure !!! honestly, i don't know...
You click awesome snaps! Very very nice indeed!
ReplyDelete# Bubbly Vodka...
ReplyDeletethank you so much...
another flautin' account Murari - karle tu aish aur chidda le hamein.. :(
ReplyDeleteaur kiita stupid instructor tha - even the most simple of guides in Rishikesh would knw not to do wat that yankee did.
lovely pics and account yet i thnk the best pic of the lot is missin..wat happened to the Black Rider pic re??
Cheers, B
usko offer to de deta apne sunny ke under training ki :D
ReplyDeleteohh saw the lady rider pic later - it didnt load in the first go.
ReplyDeleteDamn sexy it is Murari. lucky u, :D
@ B...
ReplyDeletearre teri khushi ke liye hi kar raha hoon :D
abhi tu aayegi US to tu mere liye aish karna :D
haan instructor to stupid hi thaa...
# Burf...
exactly... ye saale kitab pad pad kar instructor bane hain aur sunny ganesh kaam kar kar ke :)
# B...
haan tata par thoda slow hota hai :)
par der aaye durust aaye :)
Am gonna steal ur camera!
ReplyDeleteHeehaww
# Mez...
ReplyDeleteno way !!! :)