Vancouver and Whistler trip

Neel-n-Nikki made van couver quite famous. How can I miss visiting Canada, which is just 3 hrs north of Seattle, WA. So the planning began by gathering friends willing to spend dollars on yet another trip. Shiv, Basav, Alok and myself were part of famous five. Four of us planned to join the fifth member in Van couver. Rajesh ,my college friend, agreed to be the host in Canada for 2 days. Running around to get Canadian Visa, get visa style photograph, run to office and run back to visa consulate, all made us much more busier.

Despite heavy worload and like true travelers, we were all set to embark our journey on Jan-27-2006, Friday. Friday ! oh the same day Rang de basanti movie got released. Its a must watch movie. So first we went for movie. Enjoyed the movie thoroughly. ' Arre isko toh hindi aati hai' Amirs dialogue later became part of our Canadian trip.

After having dinner we finally started driving towards Canada. Time check - Its 12:30am. We reached Canadian border at around 3:30am. The consulate officer was wondering why four young men are driving to Canada at such an odd hour. We had to convince him that we were late because of some party and started late.

Saturday Jan-28, 2006

Day began very early. Yes it we left the apartment very early, around 11 am :-). After having brunch we went straight to world famous Capilano Suspension Bridge. Although the suspension bridge is nothing when compared to Lakshman Jhula but the rain forest adds to it beauty. The concept of treetop bridges is unique and gives wonderful view to observer. Tall and green cedar standing high, water flowing below and lovely surrounding.

Walking down different trails was thrilling. All structures were made of wood. Infact there were many Chinese mythological images kept. These objects were made from signle log and were looking wonderful. It was raining heavily so we ended the rain forest tour in two hours. We were anyway short of time and had to rush to next spot in the list.


Grouse mountain was our next destination for the day. Snow lift took us to top of mountain which was completely covered with snow. It wasn't snowing at all below and we could see green trees. But as we went up and up we could see snow covered trees like bride in white wedding gown. There was so much of snow that we decided to walk on snow, have a coffee out in snow and just enjoy the moment.















Evening was spent in downtown van couver looking at lights and watching birds :-).

Sunday Jan-29, 2006

This day was to be spent in close by city in Canada, called Whistler. It is famous for its adenture sports. Whistler is two hours drive from Van couver. The route is very scenic and we took breaks to click some photos.















One can do zip trekking, skiing, snow mobiling and many more sports. We decided to do only snow mobiling. Its like driving a snow bike. No one among us had done this before but all were very exicted about it. It was two hour tour.

There was fresh snow on mountain. Snow depth would have been about a foot. We were riding in between mountains away from any civilisation. It was all white and white. We crossed bridge and reach another mountain. Again view of snow covered trees and mountain cannot be described in this space. We played a bit by throwing snow on anyone and everyone.

Return Journey

Return jounrey was equally challenging in terms of driving car. It started snowing heavily. Road was covered with snow and it became slippery. It was dark outside and only thing visible was tail light of car ahead of you. So it was driving just following the car ahead of you. In between I became the first driver and then we all started peeping out of glass to guess the road. But I was behind the steering :-) and we all made is past the snow covered roads. We dropped our friend at Van couver and came back to Seattle at 11pm. A beautiful trip came to an end. I am sure I would visit east coast of Canada sometime in future. Canada wait for me, I will come again.