Yosemite Valley -- Introduction

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Yosemite Valley -- Introduction

Recently, at our regular school-friends’ get-together, we were talking about our ‘foreign’ trips. A friend mentioned that she had visited her daughter in Indonesia and had travelled through the archipelago.

My interest was perked up. I am always interested travel experiences, my own as well as others.

Enthusiastically I asked her what she thought of Bali.

To my utter surprise, she replied that she did not find Bali any different from our own Goa.

‘Have you seen ‘Pura Besakhi’, Bali’s Mother Temple’? It is out of this world.’ I ventured to state.

‘Mangeshi’s ‘deul’ is better than that.’ She stated her conviction.

I did not argue with her. After all, everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

But, for the first time I had come across a phenomenon which, I have realized now, is all too common. Namely, opinions of two people about the same place can be widely different and may even be exactly opposite to each other.

We had thought Bali to be a paradise on Earth.

http://charuavi.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/09/we-visit-various-touristy-places-in-bali.htm

The link above gives our Bali itinerary.

Recently, I also read a travelogue about Yosemite Valley on the Net and was surprised that even though the author’s and our opinion about Yosemite was that same, (It is simply Spectacular.) our travel experiences differed so much that I had to remind myself that I was reading about the same place that we had visited long back in 1981.

Though our trip is that old, we had enjoyed it so much that the memories of that wonderful trip are still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, our photos of Yosemite are lost. I blame it on four house-moves in the interim.

However, fortunately, we are in the Information Age and the photos of Yosemite on the Net are even more beautiful than ours were. Those photos have the added advantage that they are taken in all the four seasons - spring, summer, autumn and winter, whereas ours represented only the summer in the Yosemite Valley because we visited it at the end of the summer. Have a look at the photos below.

http://freelargephotos.com/?subject=Yosemite%20National%20Park&start=21

So, I came to the conclusion that there is no point in saying that Yosemite (Or Egypt or Bali) has been visited by umpteen numbers of people and thousands have written about it.

Every traveler’s experience of the Yosemite (Or Egypt or Bali) is still going to be unique.

Hence, I am going to write about our own unique Yosemite trip.

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