This has been the most adventurous trip of my life yet. This seemingly crazy idea of going Alaska was mooted by me, but it ended up being way more than expected.
Day 1: We went north of Anchorage to Matanuska Glacier. Hiked the glacier with normal shoes and came back to Anchorage. It was like walking on a huge ice landscape. We kept climbing until we reached a stage where we would just slip down trying to climb. Going up was much easier than coming down and at a point, the only was to come down given our shoes was to slide down (my ass and hands still hurt...)
Day 2: We headed south on Seward Highway to a hike of Exit Glacier. We were told we couldn't reach the top and we didn't. But we went far enough to see wonderful views of the glacier, and again reached a point where going up was very difficult and coming down was impossible short of sliding. I did try sliding down on one of the stretches with a gentler slope and realized that we made a good decision to stop where we did. The best part abt Alaska at this time was that the sun is out 19 hours. So we decided to do some sailing (kudos to Anu for finding the place). I had anticipated that I would be on a sailboat for the first time in my life, but I did not know that I would also drive the sailboat (yeah, we are talking tacks and jibes here!!!). The owner Greg was more than happy to let us go hands on on his sailboat, which had the head sail, the middle and the tail. Gaurav pulled up the sails and I did some steering (both with Greg's help of course). After a few tacks and a jibe, it was Gaurav's turn to steer. This was totally unexpected and hence quite wonderful.
Day 3: We went to Alyeska resort on the third day. We took the tram to the peak of the mountain, and boy, what a view. In the evening, we went to Anchorage to watch two movies. First one was the Alaska experience movie. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen. The shots taken by a helicopter in flight arount Mt McKinley and along the Alaska pipeline will make you giddy. Next, we saw the movie about Northern Lights, it was just a slide show. An absolute anticlimax compared to the earlier show.
