My first solo trip in a “foreign” land:
busking in Times Square, backpacking through New York, and camping in Harriman State Park.
Prologue
I had been in New York for about a month, and the city, I discovered is beautiful. Something is always happening, and somewhere or the other there’s always something you’re welcome to join. But there’s only so much you can take of the sky being cut up in straight edged pieces. Glowing windows of skyscrapers make poor proxies for stars. I wanted to get out and go somewhere. Some place where billboards don’t tell you what you need.
I needed money for the trip. Some essentials needed to be bought. I had brought my violin with me, so I decided to busk. I had jammed with two street musicians before, and I was kind of teetering on the edge of doing it or not doing it (I guess I’m getting older faster than I expected). In the end I decided I’ll try. If I could raise enough money I’d go.
She had red hair and green eyes. I had set up my case beside the footpath on the west side of times square. I was playing for some time, nothing was happening. She gave me two dollars and a kind smile. I will never forget her, she had made me believe everything would be possible.
When people walk by without noticing you, busking is hard. When people walk by carefully ignoring you it’s harder. And when strangers stand to listen for song after song, it’s elation. After three days I had enough to go out and buy all the supplies I needed, the fourth day was for precautionary measures. I only got two dollars that day, one from a man who just wanted to take a photo with the violin, and one from a man who wanted me to play so that he could let his girlfriend listen over the phone. That alone was worth coming out to play after being tired as hell.
Friday
I had decided to set out for Harriman state park quite early. It was only forty miles away, but the terrain would be hilly, and I had never cycled that far on hilly ground. The cycle I had was a pretty low standard thing by American standards (the cheapest one in Walmart), and luckily for me, Americans have pretty high standards. The gears worked well, the machine was a fine one. The only way the cost cutting could be felt was by the seat cutting into my butt.
I woke up exactly when I had planned to, decided the bed was quite comfortable, and sleep would be a good way to get rid of the pain from various parts of my body (the kind of pain that comes from using a laptop bag that looks good for lugging around heavy weights yesterday). Eventually I woke up again for the final time and started out at ten.
I made my way out of Manhattan, through the little hills of Harlem onto the George Washington bridge over the Hudson River. I could see the New York skyline on one side, and the New Jersey sky one the other. There’s something sad about seeing reflections of clouds on the glass walls of skyscrapers, and I tried to get deeper into New Jersey as fast as I could.
On my way I encountered a submarine left in a river as a showpiece. Just a side effect of having war obsessed governments I guess.
As I cycled up steep hills, I was thankful for each cloud that came to give even a few minutes of shade. I sat down on sidewalks when I got tired, under the largest trees and softest grass I could find. I kept checking how far I was from my destination.
Eventually I went into saddle river county Park. By this time I was tired and hungry, so I sat down in a bench under a tree and opened my first can of soup. Soon I arrived at Rochelle park. Again I was tired, and seeked out a nice bench to lie down on. The rucksack on my bag was heavy from carrying three day’s worth of meals in cans.
I lay down, under the shade of a huge tree beside a pond. A hoard of ducks were swimming lazily in the rippling water. There were trees of various shades of green, and a deep blue sky above. A light breeze blew, and suddenly it stuck me. I had been asking the most irrelevant question I could have. Trying to judge how far I was, was a useless venture. I was exactly where I wanted to be, in the middle of vast beauty. I had a tent, I could sleep anywhere. I had a stove and cans of food, I could eat anywhere. Sometimes having a destination is a burden. The road was enough.
I stuck my face into the Park’s fountain, washed off the sweat and the salt, filled up my bottles, and started off again on the winding road. On my right was a little country river, over my head sometimes a green canopy, sometimes the sunny sky, on my left were fields of grass. I had never given much attention to how grass smells.
Now I sat beside the river, felt the sweat evaporate off my skin, cooling me down, and took in as much of the grassy smelling air as I could. I’d reach Harriman before dark, I was sure. Sometimes getting tired is a good thing, you sit down to feel things you would have left unseen.
Some way down the road I sat down at a little bakery, and drowned out my tiredness with coffee and a crumb bun. This establishment was run by school going people working part time, in a town where people know each other’s names. I continued up, got happy by the road signs declaring north. At one point I decided to buy some beer. All the uphill work warranted a celebration with beer. I went into the liquor store on the other side of the road. The man at the counter, it turned out was from Kerala. I said I knew that the Malayalam word for rain is Mara, and I remembered only this because rain is one of the most important things to me. (I had set out some time ago to learn Telugu to talk to my half Telugu girlfriend who doesn’t talk to anyone in that language to the point that when people try very hard to hold a Telugu conversation with her she replies that she can’t speak the tongue, in Telugu. My teacher sometimes threw in Malayalam words because she knew that too. Learning a language is easy when it’s the language some of your muses speak. The thing is, to say the word for water, a little bit of tongue-yoga is required, so I try to practice said tongue yoga when I’m with a Malayalam speaker to see whether I have made any progress, or am still sounding like someone with his tongue tied up in a knot. When I learnt that I would actually be away for the entire Indian academic summer to do an internship in New York, the course of action was clear. I had to meet Megha before leaving, anyhow. Sitting and planning is easy, and it’s easier to get caught up in planning. Saumya practically turned me out of the classroom and I took the first train from Delhi to Kolkata that I could, and got up in the unreserved compartment. Indian state borders were drawn by languages, and the moment I saw “thapornagar” written in Bengali script on the station placard, I got elated. It meant I was finally, really really close. I sat by the door and started singing. At one point I heard a girl talking to someone on the phone in a beautiful and unknown language. Turned out she was speaking Malayalam. We sang to each other, and she taught me the word for rain in her language.) Anyway, the man at the store learned of my intentions of going camping, and scooped up as many water bottles he could with his hands and gave them to me, saying I’ll need it. Rain did bring me free water.
Finally I could see mountains in the distance. Not the road rising up to a solitary hill top like it was doing before, but mountains spanning my horizon. I felt a new rush of energy. By now, the sun rays were slanting down.
As I entered the final valley, the valley was cradling the rays of the setting sun like lovers who know they’ll be separated for a long dark time. The road took a few turns and disappeared through curtains fireworks of golden dust. I sat down on the footpath, going through a deep green grass patch. The patch work was held together by bright yellow and white flowers.
I reached the last town before going into the park, and went into a Dunkin Donuts store to get some tea. There’s a reason they’re not known for their tea. I tried to splash water from the tap in their bathroom to as many parts of my body as I could. I was sure this would be the last thing that even remotely resembles a bath, for the next two days.
I reached Reeves meadow visitor center at nine. The sun had gone down long ago, but there was still about half an hour of sky-light to spare. The visitor center only operates on weekends and holidays, so I had decided to get a map from there the next day, and camp for the night next to it. Camping is only allowed in designated areas, and the nearest such area was a long way away. So, I figured it wouldn’t be the best idea to camp right next to it and people had written about stealth camping in the park on the internet.
I went off into the trail leading into the forest to find a nice spot for pitching my tent. A group coming down the hill said there was a nice camping site about ten minutes away. After more than ten minutes I realized they were in pretty high time dilation, and I really didn’t want to climb the whole mountain in the dark. I picked the trail out by shades of darkness (one of the most precious lessons from Adrita is letting your eyes adjust to darkness rather than blind yourself with a flashlight), crossed two streams, and finally found a spot with small plants. I need a place exactly like this, because I had neither a sleeping mat nor a sleeping bag, and a cold hard ground isn’t a particularly lucrative bed. I quickly pitched the tent in the darkness broken by my phone’s light while avoiding getting bit by mosquitoes (a practice perfected by pitching tents in University for night vigils and protests).
This was a new tent, and after getting in I discovered there were some parts which I had no idea where to put. As long as the tent was successfully staying up though, this wasn’t an issue to get caught up with.
I lay down for some time, too tired to do anything else.
When I had come in, so had the darkness, and with it fireflies took the place of the yellow flowers. The valley grounds were filled with them. Now, as I sat in my tent performing a dinner while watching stars come out slowly and fill the sky from the roof window of my tent, they flew all around. With the soft glow of the skies as a back drop, the heads of trees arching up over me became characters and started a grand theater.
I didn’t want to use my used food can as bait for anyone going hungry in the forest. I also had to pee, but going out would mean sacrificing blood to mosquitoes. Solved the two problems in one shot.
I went to sleep that that night to the sight of fireflies, stars and dancing trees, with the sounds of the small gushing river, the sound of leaves talking with the wind, and what can only be described as sounds of the forest.
Saturday
I woke up feeling fresh and happy. I thought I’d use the river water to wash last night’s cans (as I’d have to carry them out with me) and my teeth and face in the stream. The water, I found out was warm enough to bathe in. There were tiny waterfalls over small rocks to make a shower.
I got into the river, bathed in water and dried myself off in the river of sunlight following the river through the forest. A man quite serious asked whether I had caught any fish.
I came up, cooked my breakfast on my newly acquired pocket stove sitting by the river, packed up and left for the visitor center. I was in need of a map (how to read a map is a life lesson I had got from my father a few years ago while hurtling down a desert highway late in the night in the exactly opposite direction we were supposed to be going because I had read the GPS wrong. Later the art was perfected with the help of Madhur while we tried to make sense of our school field trip).
On the way down, I was joined by a seventy year old Korean man (same guy who’d asked me about fishing). He used to come with his children, now they are too old to come every weekend and he’s still not old enough to not come every weekend. He told me stories of the Korean war, taught me taekwondo tricks (he’s a black belt second Dan), gave marriage advice, and said goodbye.
The woman at the visitor center, upon being asked about the chances of a bear attack said she’d never heard of one here, and quite cheerfully added I might be the first one (“though I don’t like to use that word, if you do something stupid you might get attacked. Else the bear will go about doing bear business, and you will just see it” is probably the most politically correct way of feeding stupid people to bears). She warned me of rattle snakes equally cheerfully, marked out a trail for me on the map and sent me off.
I was trying to get a view of the NYC skyline from a distance in the night, I had seen people recommending that on the internet. On a more personal note, a long time ago my first girlfriend had asked for a story, and I was painting a picture of being on top of a hill watching the blinking skyline of a city in the distance. I had been imagining the famous New York skyline that time.
I set off on the trail, tracked it sometimes by following boot marks of previous trekkers. The park service works to keep things as natural as possible, so it sets trail blazers only in the most confusing of places, keeping the rest of the trail as a puzzle to solve. Unfortunately, some trail blazers get lost. I lost the trail, figured that since I wanted a clear view, it had to be on the top of the mountain. I made my way through natural log Bridges and rock falls, through the woods to the top and realized that I had climbed a totally wrong mountain.
It was actually wrong to call it wrong, it had a pretty nice view, just not the one I was looking for. I sat there for some time, watched the lush green valleys around me, and a sole eagle ranging the skies over the mountains. It was much better to sit in the shade and enjoy the sun soaked beauty all around than worry about being in the wrong place just because I had set some place as the right one. In any case I had a map and a compass. I’d never get lost.
I made my way back to the point where I had lost the trail, and started out for a different mountain. Some way in, sure enough there came another junction where some tracking needed to be done. Too many mosquitoes tried to get friendly, so I decided to change track again, towards mountains with more civil mosquitoes.
There was no point in trying to spend a night looking at glowing city lights to fulfill half of a dream. That was a story, texted to a lover a long time ago. It would be a wastage of the mountains to chase remnants of a dream around. I had left the city. No point in trying to look at it especially when I had the chance to see other things.
I lay down on the sidewalk at the visitor center (the one place I was sure there wouldn’t be any mosquitoes in day time) , cooked lunch, and watched the somber trees of the mountains rustling in the breeze. And to think I almost went after something I decided to leave behind…
Half the day was gone, and I started on the trek up to pine meadow lake. This was a well travelled route, and proved to be quite easy to track. I steadily made my way up the mountain, and I could see the tops of the trees spacing out. And then there it was. My clear blue mountain lake.
That first glimpse was an amazing feeling, to see the brown path bordered by deep green trees, leading up to the blue green lake while the skies prepared for a sunset. I came upon a few swimmer/ sunbathers, discussed camp sites with them and went off to the other side. There were cliffs, and I wanted to camp in a place with the best view.
I reached the place, and came upon a group of campers. One of them came up and said they’re ok with sharing the space with me. I said I’ll look around for other places and if I don’t find a place I like I’ll come back and set up camp on one corner. That corner turned out to be the best after a little scouting.
I pitched the tent under a tree, on some moss and rocks, as close as I could to the cliff without getting on bare rock. Then I went to find out where people were going in the lake from.
There was a sweet spot to go swimming from, once you climbed down a few rocks of the cliff face. Or you could jump right in. I decided to check the water first.
I went in and found the water to be quite warm. I dipped and swam a bit to adjust my body to the temperature.
She was in the water before me. Her eyes were bluer than the lake around her, softer than the sky above. Sunlight sparkled off her sunset colored hair floating below the water. She asked me if I wanted to dive. I wanted to, and had never done it before. She said start with the little rock. I did that and decided to move to the higher rock.
And there I was, at the edge of a cliff, trying to jump into the lake below. I got to the edge, saw there were some rocks to clear below, and went back further in. From the water, Nadine kept giving me advice and inspiration. A party was going on at the cliff beside me, they also joined in on the inspiration. I ran to the edge and stopped. Reasons for this being a bad idea were racing through my mind. My feet were tired from the strain of the two days before. My ankles may not have enough strength to give the final push. I might cramp at the edge. My heart was beating fast in my chest. Yeah I had a whole list of why not to jump. And I had one reason to jump. I wanted to. A guy came up, I asked him are you going to jump, he said “what’s that?” while jumping off.
I had one reason. I wanted to.
I ran. I got to the edge and jumped.
The rush of falling falling falling and everything whooshing past my eyes and then hitting the water with a splash, going in deep deep down, the water engulfing me, slowing me down to a stop and then raising me up faster and faster till I burst out above the surface…
That was some experience.
I pushed the hair out of my face, swam around a bit, taking in the scenery. I jumped two more times and came back up to join the party on the rocks.
The man who’d given me the final bit of courage was Sean. He had been walking the Appalachian trail for more than three months, walked over 700 miles. We exchanged travel stories while drying ourselves off in the sunlight on the cliff top.
I went back to my tent to cook something, I was hungry. I was just setting up the stove and a can, when one of people sharing the campsite came up, and invited me to join their fire. She was Katya, from Russia. There was Tom, from Ukraine. He had first told me I could set up camp with them if I wanted to (and that Ukrainian girls are beautiful). There was Anastasia (Ukrainian girls are beautiful), and Waseem, from Belarus.
We shared the warmth of the log fire, sausages, roasted vegetables and smores.
I sat on a piece of rock and watched golden and pink clouds float above in the skies. I watched the lake change color from sky blue to green to deep blue to grey to black. I watched till the skies turned a almost black shade of blue. I watched two bolts of lightning roll through the sky encased by our valley. Leaves rustled in the distance.
I went inside the tent for a bit. A man and his dog had been playing fetch with a stick, on the other side of the lake. They were waiting for two people (they knew them, were not sure if they were friends, met once camping, and once in a bar) to camp with but they were nowhere to be found. They came over to our side to look for the people who were supposed be there. Sean and Nadine were camping a little way down from my spot, I went over to see what was happening there. They had also set up a fire, and the man with the dog was there too.
Patrick had come trail running, had no gear to camp with (only a shirt, a short, and shoes), so he was taking in the fire’s warmth as much as he could. Buster lay under the warm outside end of a log feeding the campfire. I invited them to sleep in my tent if he couldn’t find his friends.
I went back to my spot, and finally took out the packet of m&m I had brought for snacking or to use as an emergency source of energy (Soutrik had a bar of dark chocolate when we had gone on our first long distance cycling trip. That bar saved us in desperate times. Chocolate is magic). I shared that with my newly made friends. We sat on the cliff and shared the beer I had brought.
Tom suggested we go swimming. After some time, Katya gave the ultimatum, it had to be now or never. By now Tom was unsure, but I definitely wanted to go in the lake, and that spirit spread well enough.
Katya went in first, I Soon followed. The sky was black, and the stars were out. I was there, floating in a vast deep black mountain lake, tops of dark trees going up all around into the black sky splashed generously with silver stars. We were swimming in the starlight and the faint glow of the sky, Katya was telling me Russian stories of the stars we were under.
We dried ourselves by the campfire, and lay down on the rocks. It was story time. The conversation around me was in Russian, Katya translated bits and pieces for me. There’s amazing comfort in lying down surrounded by friends who I didn’t even know a few hours ago, and sharing the stars. I didn’t need to know the language to share the conversation.
Sunday
I had woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of wind rushing through the upper level of my tent, shaking it’s walls, shaking the treetops above. I simply made a burrito of myself in my raincoat to stop the cold. The stars were beautiful. I couldn’t afford to put up the rain fly. Too many stars were at stake.
I woke up to the golden early morning light, coming from an intense clear sky, and being filtered through bright green and yellow leaves dancing and twirling, pouring in though the roof of my tent.
I had a long way to go home, but I couldn’t leave this place so easily. I owed my friends a good bye. I owed this place my senses.
I decided to go swimming one last time. A Spanish group said the water was warm, and cloud shadows were cold. I swam around, taking in the view of a new day being born.
Nadine was also up, setting up a fire to make tea. I dried myself off by the fire and her warmth.
Patrick had decided to sleep in an emergency blanket by the fire. I offered to cook him a breakfast. He said he’d rather not eat, saying “what do they call it? Yeah fasting. I heard it’s good for you”. I gave buster a dog biscuit I had picked up from the visitor center (there were enough to bring home for my dogs even if I ate some). They left for the way down after a while. Buster insisted on some more fetch.
I packed up my stuff, said goodbye to everyone and everything that had made the place my home for the night, and started the trek down.
Some clouds came up, and gave some rain. The air was cleared up, and I rushed down the way that had taken so long to go up.
I stopped at an ice cream bar by the highway and had a foot long ice cream, listening to country songs playing over the speakers. Kids gave me judgmental looks for consuming ice cream as long as their hands. I watched the black road stretching out. This was freedom of the wild blue skies above, distilled into two lanes for travelers.
Fresh sunlight was out again. The trees sprayed down rain water from their leaves in the wind. I stopped at the places where I’d stopped when going up, to tell the people I’d made it.
I reached the Hudson far too soon. I lay down on a footpath to make up for gained time.
The last little bit home is always the hardest. I went into a Starbucks to get some coffee. The man at the counter gave me coffee in the largest cup. He had been sitting outside with me for some time, I had let out a tired aaaaaah, he said agreed, I laughed. “You laughed at a bad joke, I can give you some free coffee”. Maybe it was just the kindness in that cup, but it was the best coffee I’d ever had.
I took to the road. The clouds were catching fire. I rolled into Manhattan, whizzing past golden streetlamps. I had done it. An entire trip, out of my own effort.
Epilogue
I know what a dollar looks like in cents.
I know the worth of every cent. By the time I started out, I had marks of the strings cutting into my fingertips, proof I had earned all of it.
I know the weight of every meal. My pack got lighter after each one.
I had gone trekking solo for the first time, and did things I had only believed I could.
People had blocked intersections with their cars to let me pass easily. When I was sitting on a sidewalk by a lonely interstate with a what the hell made me think I could do this expression on my face, a woman had stopped her car to ask if everything was all right.
I have gone to sleep to the smell of pinewood fire. I have done things which I wanted to, was scared to do it too, but I have done it. Maybe, only because strangers had come up to become friends.
Everything I had done, was possible only because a few people had stopped to step out from the busy crowd and gave me a little money. Every thank you I said, was of pure gratefulness.
I have cycled shirtless for miles, felt every bit of the world around me. I have walked barefoot in the mountain top.
Maybe I’ll see them on some trail again some day. I’ll always remember Nadine’s simple inspiration, Sean’s easygoing wildness, Waseem’s quiet presence, Ana’s sparkling warmth, Tom’s infectious cheerfulness.
I’ll remember Katya’s kindness? Friendship? I don’t know what to call it. Something. I’ll remember everything.
I wouldn’t say it was an out of the world experience. It was in this world, and that’s perhaps the beauty of it.
Long before I started this blog, this travelogue was first published on: https://thestrongtraveller.com/
