Once in life, plane ride!

It was one of those trips which kept postponing for various reasons. It was busy work schedule, not enough vacation left, moving to a new city, starting new work and et al. One day i just decided that this is the right time and booked the tickets the same evening before we find a reason to postpone this again. Alaska , the last frontier. This place definitely still remains serene and natural. So much that even in Summer the peak tourism time, we were the only two people in many spots and trails. One such place was the 4 seated plane. After tons of debate with myself and my husband we finally decided that we will take a plane ride at Denali. I found a spot with good cellular connection, stopped the car and called Talkeetna air taxi and booked a slot. We were not doing glacier landing but only flying over the alaskan range and getting a closer look at Mt Denali. I did not imagine what we were signing up for at that moment. Next day we reached the place one hour ahead and decided to stroll in the town. For our amusement, Talkeetna is the perfect little town to stroll around with many art shops and family owned ice cream shops. Before we knew we had spent the one hour time we had and hurried back to checkin at the small airport. We finished all the paper work and then the wait began. We almost had to wait for an hour until our pilot came by. There she was after the long wait. Daneil was her name and she looked so happy and confident. She took us to the plane. It was a small aircraft with 4 seats. There were only 2 passengers, my husband and myself. I have to admit that i was scared as hell to see the small plane and listen to the safety procedure. As I sat in the aircraft i consoled myself and gave a small positive pep talk to myself. My husband had the go pro to record the whole thing. I just sat back and relaxed or not as the plane took off. It was very nice to see the lush green forest below us. Glacial water flowing by in massive amount and it is impossible to imagine how many glaciers are melting to generate that kind of water. After few minutes the view changed. Mt Denali was not so far anymore and it was like a dream. I could see the thick glaciers below us and snow covered mountains all around. The alaskan range world had only 3 people and all were in this plane. We flew between the mountains and i was spell bound. I think this will be the most beautiful sight that i have witnessed. The beauty that nature offers is unimaginable and to witness such beauty i could only call myself the luckiest! I can tell with full confidence that when i say heaven and close my eyes i am right back to these mountains. The thrill and joy that these mountains provide needs to be enjoyed by every human. Not just our generation but all the future generations to come.I would call that moment as the most beautiful moment of our whole trip. It was also good to know that the national park service strives every single day to keep these mountains clean and serene. The mountaineers who climb these mountains are required to carry back all the trash that they generate including the human waste. I must say that I admire the effort they put to keep it unharmed.

Chocolate World

Being born in a middle class family with two siblings we could just afford the basic necessities of life. We were not allowed to buy luxurious stuff which were not required unlike some of my friends. Chocolates fell into this category. Once in a while my parents would buy big candy bar and give it to us. We had to share that bar and would eat 1 or 2 pieces daily until it would get over. We would cherish every single bite and I even stored the wrappers. I would always dream and fantasize about this chocolate world. A big bungalow made of chocolate walls and having chocolate fountains everywhere. Colorful flowers were made of different flavored chocolates in the garden. There was a pond made of chocolate syrup and I would ride in a chocolate boat in that pond. The pond even had white chocolate swans swimming at ease. I would even wear a pink colored chocolate frock and had chocolate sundae for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There would be no one to stop me or share my chocolates. Entire world belonged to me and only me. This fantasy did fade as I grew, but my love for chocolates never did it fade. The crazy side of me still hoped all these to be true one day. One of my all-time favorite movie is Home alone. The scene where the boy watches a movie with a big bowl filled with ice cream sundae was imprinted in my brains the moment I saw it. Even till date when I say Home Alone this scene plays in front of my eyes. During my initial days in US, I literally survived on ice cream. I had them for lunch and dinner. I would buy a big bucket of ice cream, chocolate syrup and gulp them as I watched Netflix nonstop. I still recollect those moments as one of the best moments in my life. I would not recommend doing that to others, as I gained unwanted pounds for that behavior of mine. I don’t stuff myself like that anymore but my love for chocolates is still fresh. Smell of chocolates can still make my heart skip a beat or two. Chocolates are still my true love.

Unwind in Empire builder

It was one of my friend’s brilliant idea that we should take a train to Seattle for our office trip. It immediately ringed ‘yes’ bells in my mind. The route is very scenic and we wanted to venture out and see how it’s going to turn out. Hence we materialized the plan and took the train. Our journey started around 4.00 AM from Fargo. There was roughly around 30 hours of ride that was ahead of us. As soon as we entered , we were keen on knowing what all facilities were offered. Turns out, our bed was already made and it was the first thing we saw and were temped to take a nap. We were all pretty tired. We had not slept because of the weird timing of the train. We went to sleep and had a good night sleep. We woke up around 7.30 AM. We brushed and then headed to the dining area for our breakfast. The experience was amazing as the dining area had big windows, fresh flowers were laid in vases of all the tables. Food itself was tasty and the view was good too. The servers were in great mood and wore big smiles. They greeted us and spoke in a friendly tone. After a wholesome breakfast we headed towards the observation car. We occupied some seats with good view and started reading books. As we crossed North Dakota and Montana, it was more of plain land to look out. I was able to spot some oil fields as well. By the time we reached glacier park it was night. We were kind of disappointed, because we were unable to see anything scenic in that pitch dark. We slept a little disappointed. The next morning when I opened my eyes we were in Washington state. It was very pretty outside. Large trees soaked in snow, beautiful snow covered mountains. We were amidst this winter wonderland. After a stretch of snow covered mountains it was our turn to see the ocean on one side of the train. It was a very calm morning and we had our breakfast with our hearts filled with joy, as finally we had seen something scenic. We reached Seattle ahead of the schedule. After a week long stay in Seattle, we took the same train back to Fargo. We boarded the train at around 4.40 PM. As we sat in our spots we savored some cheese cake that we had grabbed at the last minute from Cheese cake factory. I did sleep for straight 12 hours that night. I woke up at 6.00 in the morning to a gorgeous sight outside. We had our breakfast and were happy to see that few of the staff members were the same from our previous journey. We headed to the observation car, I took out my camera and started to capture few moments. We were passing through Glaciers and it was absolutely magnificent. Streams in between snow covered mountains, seemed to be like a fairly land. After having lunch and stuffing ourselves with food we saw that we were back in plain regions of Montana. We walked a bit, read books and played a little. When I look back to this journey I have some good memories. We had no access to internet, got all the time to sit and stare out of the window. In this busy life we cannot afford to do that. This journey provided the opportunity to unwind and relax. It was a well-deserved break from regular stuff.

Experience of Life

They say that there is one day when every person would feel nervous, excited, have cold feet and many more things at the same time. This did happen to me on a day prior to my wedding day. I had been waiting for my wedding day for almost two years, planned the entire thing for six months. Preparation time was the most exciting phase and extremely stressful at the same time. It involved things like deciding the venue, menu, flowers, clothing, jewelry, wedding card design, list of guests, makeup person, photographer, video recording person, wedding website design, henna tattoo design, henna design artist, the stage decoration etc. Making all these decisions were so much fun and equally challenging. This could as well be the most challenging planning anyone could do in their lives. Just couple of days before, there were loads of thoughts about the entire event like how would I look, if things would go as planned, if there would be any obstacles etc. What surprised me was on the actual day, none of thoughts came to my mind. The only thing that mattered on that day was my partner and the happiness of finally being one. Things like how I looked, how my pictures came, who all had come to the wedding and all other thoughts had disappeared from my brain. The experience of getting married was totally different than I had expected. It was like the whole world had come to a still and it was just him and myself who moved. We were the only two in that moment, everything around us were grayed out. I was the happiest that day and I could not help but smile all the while. The feeling of holding hands and deciding to spend the rest of lives together among-st the ups and downs of life can only be felt and not explained.

I would say, that getting married is an experience not to be missed and cannot be matched to any other experience.

The Only one!

Days were dreadful,
Days were lonely.
I prayed and hoped for better days.
Like a silver line midst the clouds, I saw glances of your smile.
They were samples of joy.
Even in small doses, they made me feel high.
There were difficulties and some life changing trials,
I would not stand if you were not right by my side.
A mountain of problems looks like a miniature,
A tiny bliss looks like a peak of joy.
The common factor, of course is you; my boy.
My life is no less a painting and you are no less a Picasso,
For all the colors that you fill, I fly.
With time I have known, my smiles were meant to be unlocked by you; the only one.

My world

When you are so awesome,
When you are so sweet,
When you are so humble and joyous,
When you can light up my world,
When you can show me the path of happiness,
When you can bring my dreams to life,
When you can care and cuddle with love,
When you can bring out a smile, even in pain,
When you can comfort me with a word or two,
When you can stand by my side and the rest is assured,
All that is true! when my world is YOU.

Funny rat race

Can any of you recall one of those days, the day when you were able to think and see crystal clear. I recently came across one such day. I decided to document the thoughts and information that my mind processed on this very special day. I am not ready to lose any of this information. I am very confident that this day has changed the path of my life and this path will take me to an exotic new place.
Even before I start spilling the details about this spectacular day, I want to confess that it’s been exactly one year since my last blog. I am highly disappointed to be saying this. At the same time I am glad to be back, especially with the information about this day.
The feeling started few months back; I did not give this feeling the importance it deserved. I ignored the feeling just like a person on diet ignores the subconscious when he or she is enjoying a bite of favourite ice cream. One last day, the feeling erupted in the form of hot lava and demanded my attention. I had no other choice but to entertain this feeling. The feeling is termed as unhappiness. I gave an opportunity for this feeling to express itself. The reason for this feeling was my own actions. The feeling pointed out that I had built a secure wall around me. This wall is called a limit to my dreams and desires. I have set an imaginary limit to every single detail in my life. This includes the kind of house I live in, the car that I drive, vacation that I take, time and attention that loved ones around me get etc.. is limited. When I tried to dig into this a little deeper, I recognized that this was because of the limit that I have put on the kind of work I do. I have a work with limited earnings which was the root cause to my limited wall that I have built. I decided to dig into my work life, not just the current work but I put all my 5 years of work life into lime light and started dissecting every bit. I was surprised to extract few of the information which left me shocked. I am still surprised that I am living in this perfectly fake world, getting entangled every day a little more. Few of this information that I extracted from 5 years of work life were like this.
1. Every single year, someone else decided how much money I will take home. The person making this decision had no idea that he or she was deciding the limit to my lifestyle. One person got the right to judge how smart or stupid I am.
2. Every other peer worked and desired to be the most successful person in that organization. Failing to realize that there can be only one CEO at a time.
3. I was paid for eight hours a day, but this does not mean I had to work for eight hours a day.
4. There were few smart people who planned a game. They paid for eight hours and expected twelve hours of work and named it a healthy competition. If I had to win the game, all I had to do was work more for less pay.
5. The smart people who designed this game got their work done for no money and I who claimed to be smart worked for free.
6. Work life balance, team collaboration etc. These are just fancy terms with beautiful definitions. When I am busy voluntarily working for free there is nothing called a life to balance the work. When I know I will be measured as an individual when it comes to set a limit on my pay check, there is no place for team collaboration.
7. I am so busy in this race that family, friends and health come second.
8. My ideas, creativity, passion are still limited to the four walls of my cube.

Collecting this data gave me a chance to pause the rat race. I realized that I do not want to set limits on anything. I wanted to be free and fly free. I wanted to make this world a better place and did not want to be one more rat in the race. I am very happy that I got a chance to stop and look back, revaluate and start a fresh. Start fresh for a better today and beautiful tomorrow.
I do not want to conclude that working in a cube is bad. I am not an achiever or an ideal person to make any conclusion. I have no clue as to where my path will lead me. My gut feeling says that if I want to fly free to greater heights then cubicle is not my place.