I hiked the Grand Canyon

I write this piece with a great sense of pride and accomplishment. Its not a travelogue. I don't have the eloquence to write one. Its not a "i did this and i did that" self-appraisal of my trials and tribulation in doing the South kaibab-Tonto-BrightAngle loop of the Grand Canyon either. Not that i don't want to write one, but i fear putting them down in words would devoid the endeavor of its true value. After all, for a grass eater like me, a 14 mile killer of a hike in 12 hours is a no mean accomplishment and i am swelling with pride when i make that statement.
So, without further ado, let me tell you what occurred on the 25th of May 2008. Me and 3 other friends set out to hike the Canyon on this fateful day. As i have told you before, I have promised myself not to make this into a travelogue, but i could not help keeping the following detail out as its part of our masochistic deeds. Having hit the bed at 10 PM the previous day, we started the day at 2.30 AM (read as At Morning), started from the Motel in Flagstaff, AZ at 4.30 AM, reached the South Rim at 6 AM and and South Kaibab (henceforth SK) trail head at 6.30 AM. We started the descend of the canyon here along the SK trail. As promised by innumerable bloggers who had taken the dive before, SK trail started offering us mind blowing views of the Canyon within minutes. John Keates' "A thing of beauty is a Joy forever" is never more true than with the sight of the Grand Canyon and no adjectives and superlatives are enough to describe this humbling wonder of nature. Consequently, having found an excuse for not describing the magnificence of the Canyon , i will now proceed to the part where we reached the "ooh aah" point of the SK. It was 9.30 AM by then and we had descended down 4.5 miles. There was a fishy looking sign to "Tonto trail" (henceforth TT) here and an equally fishy looking Mule tamer pointed us to the trail head and drew a convoluted direction of the trail in thin air.
Before we realized what was going on, we had traversed close to a mile on TT. The reason i say "we realized what was going on" is because we indeed did not know what was going on. You see, when you do not spot civilization a mile on either side of the trail, for all the mention that TT got in the maps and in the blog pages, you start doubting the authenticity of the path you have embarked on. And this became even more "clear", when we hit a fork in the trail. So, as all wise explorers in the history of mankind have done, we put a toss for the fork we would take (If you have seen the movie "Butterfly effect", you would have understood why i would loved to have taken the other route and seen what would have happened with my life..:)) The left work won the toss and we proceeded on it. Calling this our TT, we got some fabulous views of the Canyon here and a small water Creek, an oasis in the desert. We chilled out for a while near the Creek, still convinced that we were pioneering a new trail.
Alas, the seclusion did not last long. We spotted civilization about 3.5 miles into TT trail (indeed it was Tonto...:() and it dawned on us that we were about a mile and a half from Indian Garden, our point of return/hike up the canyon and more prominently, the point where we had promised ourselves to open the delicious "vegi biryani" in our backpacks.
Indian Garden at 12 noon and backpack opening at 12.15. Oh God, what a tragedy that was. All hikes have their downside and ours was the food. We could not have asked for a worse time to taste the most disgusting piece of Indian junk food that we had ever placed into our mouth. Despite this, 85% of it going inside our stomachs speaks volumes about the hunger and fatigue we had been thru' till then.
The final leg of the hike, the Bright Angel trail (BT henceforth), or rather "Stairway to Hell" as it turned out to be for us, was the 5 mile hike up the canyon back to the South Rim. With the Arizona afternoon sun beating down and with a 9 mile hike already behind us , the morale was not the greatest. The misery started at 1.30 PM. After close to a mile , Raghu started cramping up. The first sings of masochism had started to raise its ugly head. Me , Becker and Leander were still hanging in there till about the 3rd mile mark. It started getting to me by then. The climb up started getting steeper and there seemed no end in sight. At times like this, you tend to think why the "f*** am i doing this to myself". But then, the joy of pushing yourself to the limit is something which you taste once and you wanna taste it again and again. It was sheer will and nothing else (my leg and my body had completely give way around the 4 mile point) that drove me in the end. I made it to the top at 4.30 PM and it was an unparalleled feeling to have conquered the Grand Canyon albeit a small part of it. Tougher trails, i am sure wait in future and how can you say no to another Canyon hike. But, this experience will live on for the rest of my life...