Grand Canyon + Antelope Canyon - Rucha Jog (2019) - उनाडक्या.कॉम

Grand Canyon + Antelope Canyon : United States of america Unadkya

Grand Canyon + Antelope Canyon : United States of america Unadkya
Scheduled Tours :

The jet lag has worn off (it has been too long to pretend otherwise).
The bags are unpacked (well as unpacked as they can possibly be at this point).
The photographs are eating away my memory (of the gadget. My capacity for recounting details is limitless. And accurate. You can ask the men!)
Monotony has taken over holiday euphoria (quicker than I hoped).

And its time. Its time to revel in nostalgia. To pay a visit again, to the United States of America. For even if only slightly, it reminds of novelty & excitement. And glorious days that have gone by, as fast as glorious days do.

The question now, is, where do I begin? How do I put it? Should I categorize? Narrate by the day? Talk about people? Places? Cuisines? Landscapes?

The easiest, will be beginning with pictures, that do no justice to the grandeur of nature, but are beautiful all the same (and make my work a lot easier), and also happen to be my very favorite part of the whole trip & have made traveling halfway across the globe worth my while.

Now sitting here, & planning a trip is one thing. Visiting the place & taking in the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, is quite another. And believe me, it gets better & better as the tour progresses. If the Grand Canyon is magnificent, the Horseshoe Bend is breathtaking. You can spend an entire day here & yet leave with a feeling that you haven’t experienced it in its entirety & haven’t gotten quite enough of the Colorado river turning around 270 degrees, creating something that is so fantastic, in its wake. And when you top it off with Antelope Canyon, you feel amazed at the creation & quite dwarfed in the whole scheme of things.

The funny thing here, is that the whole of the Grand Canyon, was filled with fog. Dense, thick, cannot see beyond 2 feet, kind of a fog & I thought “here goes my chance… it fancies a disappearing act, much like the canyon”. But then the sun shone. Quite literally. It was quite dramatic, the unveiling, I must tell you. One minute, it was all white. And the next, it was this – grand, and rightfully so.

The Horseshoe Bend, in itself, is so mesmerizing, you’ll forget all your troubles behind. Hell, you’ll leave your whole world behind. It is that enchanting. And to add to that beauty, I witnessed a proposal. He asked. A hundred strangers stood witness. She said a whooping yes. And his heart started beating again. A moment that is so perfect, can only be surreal…

The Antelope Canyon (there are two, I visited the lower), was the one, that I had mistaken for the Grand Canyon, all my life. It was red. To the naked eye at least. The whole canyon. Below ground level. A very pastel shade of red. With its pretty patterns & sandy structures. The yellows that you see here, are mostly the camera’s doing (not a very good one at that), but beautiful nevertheless. I also hear that some lenses are also capable of capturing the violets & purples. But for now, make do with these…

Another highlight of this 2 day trip was the people I met. A very friendly, inclusive bunch that made everyone feel welcome & the trip a lot more fun. Alone, can be lonely, but thanks to them, it was an adventure. (They also took quite a few pictures of me, which otherwise, in my trips, are missing)

I’d made my intentions plain, about the length of the write-up for this part of the tour. The pictures were to do the talking (and hopefully are). But look at them. Can you blame me, for going on & on about it? And this, still, is rather constrained.
Okay okay, that’s that. Go on now. Look…

P.S. Almost forgot to mention the Hoover dam. Its man-made! But still a wonder, won’t you agree?

Reserving the most mundane, albeit informative part of the trip for the end –

Since I was traveling alone (& United States is a huge country & I didn’t wan’t to drive by myself, especially because of the left-hand, right-hand business), I’d booked this part of the trip, which consisted of 2 days, through Tours For Fun. The broad itinerary was as follows –

Day 1 :

Begin the sojourn from Vegas – head to Hoover dam (spend an hour there) – visit Grand Canyon National park (spend around 2 hours there) – head to a Hotel for the night.

Day 2 :

After breakfast, start for the Horseshoe bend (spend 2 hours there) – Head to Antelope canyon (spend an hour and a half there) – head back to Vegas, United States of America.

The tour cost was ~300$. (It is slightly lower if you have a travel partner, as you end up sharing the hotel room). The tour was well organised & the guide could speak in English & Mandarin. The bus was comfortable. The hotel was clean & well maintained, with all the basic amenities in place.

Breakfast for the second day was the only meal included in this price, however there were meal stops at locations which had famous food chains like McD, Subway, KFC, Taco Bell. All in all, the travel experience was a good one & worth considering if you want to visit the Grand Canyon & Antelope Canyon, with everything taken care of.

– Rucha Jog.

NOTE :

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