We flew in to Seattle around midnight and had a night layover before we headed out. The girls were all sleeping in in the morning. That gave me enough time to sneak out of the hotel early morning and go meet Raghu Ram. We used to work together long time back in the same company in Dallas. Then he moved to Seattle and I moved to Atlanta. We came very close to meeting each other twice but failed in both occasions. This time, I made it though!!

Was great catching up with him over a cup of Seattle’s very own Starbucks coffee. Other than catch up on family and old friends, I also got some insight into some of the challenges of the high end clothing retail industry.

It was great catching up with Raghu after over a dozen years or so..

We were done with our trip. We still had a couple of hours at hand. Took the family to visit our office in Anchorage. Sharmila had great curiosity to see our cameras and sensors and how they are loaded on our planes. It was a great sunny day. I was fairly sure all the planes would be up in the air collecting data. Fortunately one of the planes – Tango Bravo – had come down to the ground for some checkups. We went to the hangar and had Sharmila, Natasha and Nikita get in the plane and see how we do things.

Also got a chance to say Hi to my colleagues in the office…

Be it Kalyani or be it Atlanta, there is a time tested way of melting a Roy heart away in our family… hand any one of them either a baby or a dog. And if it is a baby dog, you have hit pay dirt. There are not too many things that will make Sharmila snatch something away from her daughters (yes, it happened and Natasha and Nikita has made every effort ever since to ensure that she will never forget it 🙂 ).

Most people carry big boxes of salmon and other game when they leave Alaska. For a moment, I was afraid that I might have to buy a couple of new tickets to fly some dogs and puppies home with us.

Truth be told, it was for the asking. Nobody asked me though. They just kept fighting among themselves…

To get a slice of life in Alaska, we went to a sled dog tour. First, I have never seen that many dogs – 90 of them in one place. Second, the Siberian huskies look way too adorable. These dogs are built to run over hundred miles a day. For day after day after day. Running is what they are born to do. Some of these dogs have been Iditarod race winners (that is a 1049 miles route!!!). When we went there, I could not believe how rowdy those dogs were. We were explained that they have sensed that we have come to go for a ride. So, each one is jumping and barking “Pick me, Pick me”.

We picked thirteen of them to pull our carriage. There were three carriages in all. The dogs were so overexcited to get a chance to run, it was a task just to hook them up. There was even a senior dog walking up and down trying to calm these young dogs down. It was amazing watching the monitor dog bark at low volume to keep everybody calmed down. Most of the young ones were listening to the adult dog as much as my teenagers listen to me!!

After a two mile sled run (on dirt roads, not snow), when we came back, it was almost startling to notice how quiet every dog had become – the ones that went for the run and the ones that did not. They had realized that the run had come to an end. Now they wanted to be cuddled. Natasha and Nikita went ahead and paid cuddling attention to each one of our thirteen dogs.

If you ever wanted to know how intelligent dogs can be, you have to try interacting with some of these Siberian huskies!

And sometimes that is what it takes for these two to bond together…