In California, Preparing for the John Muir Trail

Rachael and I have made it safely back to the states and yesterday flew out here to San Luis Obispo, CA and are staying at Alyssa's house. Its gorgeous out here and hope it stays this nice on the trail! We have been buying a ton of food and are dehydrating a lot of things. We're almost ready to go. We'll be driving up to Yosemite tomorrow to start the hike and are planning on spending about 20 days to complete it. 

We're shipping all of our food to the various food pick up points. It looks like we will go about 6 days before our first restock, 3 days before the next, 6-7 days until the next and then 3 days until we are finished. Most people don't have the luxury of the last restocking point, but Alyssa's parents are being really helpful and will be driving to a trailhead about 5 miles away from the intersection of the JMT and then hike out to meet us and give us the last 3 days worth of food! They will also meet us at Mount Whitney at the end of the hike which will be awesome.

On a side note, I threw out my back yesterday but it looks like I will still be able to start the hike with Alyssa and Rachael at our planned time. They put me on some steroids and muscle relaxers and I've been doing some exercises and have been doing pretty well. Much better than the last time I threw out my back! If I keep improving at this rate I'll definitely be ready to go with no problems.

So excited!!

Almost time to leave

Everything is wrapping up here nicely and I'm having no problems moving out thankfully! It was sad saying bye to my ultimate friends I've made here since yesterday was the last time I would be playing with them. I will probably miss them the most along with Siva when I leave here. Rachael asked me the other day what I would miss most and after a long while of thinking the only two things I could think of were the new friends I made and having so extremely little to worry about. Even though there are infinitely many perks to living in the states over living here, having almost no pressures while still having a great group of friends is amazing.

 

Unrelated, but I apologize for the timebeing about being slow to respond to e-mails and such because the system here is having all sorts of problems with authenticating me on certain huge sites. I can't access gmail, facebook, or even my ewbuw site. Hopefully I'll have access soon!

 

Tomorrow we are traveling to Mysore finally to explore a huge palace and see some extremely old temples. There is one that is 4000 years old! Then on Sunday I am leaving for the airport and will be back in Naperville Monday morning bright and early. Rachael and I then have two days to pack our bags, buy any extra camping supplies, and head out to California to meet Alyssa and get ready for the John Muir Trail. We'll be starting the actual hike one week from tomorrow! I think I would be really sad about leaving here if it weren't for this hike. 

 

Anna, Kyle, Rachael and I are going out to dinner with Rachael's labmates now so I have to go. I hope to get in touch with all of you soon!

A sad week

Just wanted to give you all a quick update so you know I'm still alive. Its been a while since I've posted. Unfortunately on Monday, my grandpa passed away so I've been pretty bummed. Of all the people reading these posts, I got by far the most feedback from him so I'm glad I was at least able to keep in contact with him during these last few months despite being on the other side of the world... I'll certainly miss him a lot.

This weekend I'm traveling to Siva's home again near Salem in Tamil Nadu so I'll be out of contact for a few more days. Once I'm back, I have less than a week before heading home to Chicago and then after spending 2 days there I'll be headed out to California for hiking the John Muir Trail with Rachael and Alyssa. Despite a fun summer I'm really excited to leave here to go hiking for 3+ weeks. Alyssa and I have been committed to taking this trip for over a year now :)

Last weekend at Pondicherry was fantastic and I'll have to post about that soon. Just not quite in the mood this week to write a gushing review of possibly the best weekend here so far. :/ Soon though.