Embracing the Discomfort: Skiiing Edition

In February 2021, a friend took us skiing for the first time. In the excitement of the opportunity, I severely under-estimated the difficulty of skiing, especially for someone who had never skated before (on land or ice). We went straight to the lift, up the mountain, and down the slope. And I fell. A lot. But that was also the day I decided I wanted to learn to ski and that I would be back. Someday.

In February 2023, watching adults and kids skiiing in a small town in Austria, as normally as walking, was a reminder of the joys of this winter sport. They were easygoing, relaxed and happy. It was just another Wednesday for them and they were skiing to get to the cafe, to buy groceries and just spend time with each other. It was a reminder of the sport I wanted to learn, and the normalcy of it all. It wasn’t so hard: It just required learning and practice.

And so this past ski season, I decided to take lessons. Finally. The first few lessons were rough. I fell a lot, and I got up each time. But I felt like I was learning. Albeit, slowly (or atleast slower than I’d like). I had to accept not having control directly on my feet, but rely on how my feet in skis felt on the snow. It was a few layers disconnected for me to feel immediately comfortable. Every time on the mountain was a new experience with different skis, snow, weather conditions and people traffic and most of all an evolving skill level; all of which brought its own set of learning. It took patience and strength to embrace the discomfort, while I was mentally drained and physically exhausted, to keep going and try that one more time, do that one extra run and try to fix the one thing I was trying to on any given day.

It took a few weeks to get used to being on the snow, and once I did, the reward of being able to ski while staring at snow-clad granite peaks of the Sierras, around the powdery pines and zig-zagging trails was a rewarding experience to cap off the season. I can’t wait for the 2024-25 ski season to start. I’ll likely fall a bunch, but I know I will get better if I keep at it. Slowly, steadily, eventually.

Why I Use Apple Maps

For over 3 years now, since I moved to USA, I have primarily relied on Apple Maps for all of my travel and mapping needs. And the reasons for it, in more or less my order of priority, are pretty simple:

• Apple Maps has all the places and locations I have ever wanted to go to. There hasn’t been a single place that I have tried to go to and not found it on it.
• Ever since I started using it in 2016, it has never got me to a wrong place or put me on an incorrect route.
• It has eerily accurate travel time predictions, and others agree. Waze may estimate the shortest times, but they are rarely ever accurate. Google Maps is better, but still has variability. Apple, on the other hand, usually predicts the exact time or slightly over. For me, that translates ETAs into TAs ;).
• Privacy. This is a big, recurring and extremely important topic for me. I do not want one company to have all my data, use it for profiling me, follow me around the web and sell that data to target me with ads.
• It is fast. Blazing fast. While Google Maps has continued to get more bloated over the years, Apple Maps has gotten faster. Vector maps do that, you know? That also means I haven’t really needed to ‘download maps for offline use’ (which Apple Maps does not offer). The cache is pretty reasonable so just routing to a place or exploring it has added the maps for to my device.
• Speaking of offline use: It reroutes successfully even when I am offline and make a wrong turn or miss a turn!
• The timing and space between Apple Maps notifications for upcoming turns matches the prep time I need to make a turn or take an exit.
• While it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Google Maps, it does maps right and that’s all I usually care about.
• I have found Apple Maps’ lane guidance to be much more accurate.
• With iOS 13, Apple Maps has added an incredible new amount of features that includes locations of signals and stop signs and included that for even better guidance (’turn right at the next light’!).

I Went to Statue of Unity

Almost about a month ago, I visited the Statue of Unity (SoU), Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue near Baroda. Hailed as the biggest statue in the world, this was my first experience of visiting a tourist destination in India after living and traveling in USA for over 3 years. Here are some of my thoughts and observations from that visit, in approximate order of my visit:

• I was there on 26th December, 2019. The tickets to go to the observation deck were sold out, so I could only walk up to the foot of the statue (more on that later).
• My first (and most consistent) observation throughout was the sheer mismanagement of the whole operation. The site had 3 attractions, the statue itself, a garden and a dam viewpoint. The only way to travel from one of the parking lots to these attractions was to take a bus setup and run by the SoU complex. However, I could not choose where I went. I was forced to go from parking - statue - dam - garden - statue - parking, getting off at each step, walk fairly significant distances, wait in long lines, before being able to get into the next bus. Talk about compounding delays…
• Every photo, hoarding, symbol in the SoU complex was attributed to Narendra Modi and (to a lesser extent) Vijay Rupani. I mean, just look at this bus run by SoU for transport in the area (not in the photo is a circular logo of Statue of Unity on the far left, of the same size as other circles). The photos of Modi and Rupani are, unsurprisingly, larger than the statue or Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel! Or look at the website for this statue, which maintains the same theme.

  

• The dam was fine. It was a dam and there was nothing grand about it. Maybe I am colored by my visits to Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, but my dad agreed that there was nothing to see in the dam.

  

• One thing that I found weird was that the focus was on the downstream of the dam. Every other dam I have visited focuses on showcasing the upstream and the reservoirs created by those dams. Personally, I feel like that has provided me a better perspective into the significance of the dam. Here, I thought the visit to the dam was absolutely pointless.
• The ‘Valley of Flowers’ was underwhelming. There were few flowers that you wouldn’t find in most places in India. The view of the statue, from here, however, was actually pretty neat.
• The statue was massive and pretty cool. However, at the end, it was just a statue and there was nothing more to it.
• The light and sound show, just after sunset, however, was exceptional. It was a great summary of the life and times of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. I learnt a little more about him and his work than I did before.
• The story of Patel and his work in the country, sadly, left out significant (but important) parts of history that matter. The story mentioned the troubles into getting the princely states of Junagadh and Hyderabad into the Dominion of India, but conveniently skipped any mention of Jammu and Kashmir, which Patel offered to Pakistan in exchange for Junagadh.
• Similarly, the whole show spoke of Jawaharlal Nehru exactly zero times. I felt that was inauthentic and inaccurate given how instrumental Nehru was in the integration of princely states into modern India.
• On the contrary, the show talked of Modi, his vision and his hard work a few too many times. The last 5 minutes of the show basically melted into a Narendra Modi cheerleading festival, including playing an audio of a speech Modi gave! I thought it was ridiculous that any politician, any CM, or any PM should be: a) accredited for building a statue, no matter how grand; and b) have his speech about him building the statue appear in a show meant to describe someone else’s life and work. It is narcissistic and egotistical.
• I realize that misinformation about Jammu and Kashmir and Jawaharlal Nehru serve the current dispensation, but I sincerely think distortion of history to appease a single party’s politics only furthers the divide in our country.

I am glad I went to Statue of Unity. I learnt a little more about Patel, but a lot more about my country.

U.S. National Park Service

It has been just over 3 years since I have been in the USA, and in this time I have come to realize that one of my favorite things about USA is the National Park Service. I have visited more than 15 national parks in various parts of the country, hiked across most of them, and marvelled at the things I saw. I have experienced snow-clad mountains, scorching deserts, canyons that have been shaped over millions of years, hot springs sitting on volcanoes, tiny streams, glacial lakes, and rivers with lush waterfalls. No 2 parks were the same and I have never felt underwhelmed at the end of each day.

Some of the reasons I love national parks are:

• The ease and accessibility to explore some of the most untouched parts of the world, be it mountains, rivers, deserts or forests.
• The way these parks are maintained (by NPS), supported by rangers, and the facilities (roads, water filling stations, restrooms, hotels, restaurants) that are created with minimal disturbance to the surrounding areas.
• The flexibility that allows me to decide how much time I spend in the park, from hours to days, and guides that help me do the same.
• The well-designed scenic drives that help showcase some of the popular sights in the park from the convenience of a car.
• The detailed and charted maps for hikes that ensure a safe trip in the park.
• The rewards, in the form of never-seen-before landscapes that make every drop of sweat on difficult hikes worthwhile.

Onto getting my US NPS Passport stamped at every remaining NPS location .