March 27-28, 2004. Group Size: 3
Pictures Here
The NewYork City (NYC) - the Big Apple of America and the third largest city in the world. We, myself and my friends, Jaykumar Sunderajan & Hemant Kumar Sahoo, visited this city on second weekend of spring break at MIT. The experience was amazing, not just because it was our first out-of-Boston tourist visit, but also because of NYC's aura, which stills lingers in memory. You have to walk down the fifth avenue to see the towering wonders of steel and concrete reminding one of, on one hand, the utter insignificance of human compared to environment around him, and on the hand, the pride of human race as creater of these monuments. I will try my best to recount my experience to give you the vicarious pleasure or sweet recollection of the experience.
DAY 1 - Friday 26th, 2004We decided to go NYC by one of the cheapest options available, the Chinatown bus. Chinatown, as the name suggests, is locality in Boston which is mainly occupied by Chinese immigrants. Actually, similar "Chinatown" exists in NY as well, and may be in many other cities, that I might not be aware of. So they run buses between Chinatown of Boston to that of NY. And the fare if $10 for 4:30hr ride. Compared to train, $80, and plane, $50, this sure is the most desirable options for poor and students (usually the same!). We were planning to stay with Sahoo's friends in NY, and as a guest gesture we decided to take some gifts for them when we go. What else could better gift other than MIT T-Shirt's! We purchased two pieces from MIT COOP (cooperative society of MIT/Harvard) and boarded the Red Line, local train of Boston, to reach Chinatown. There we purchased tickets and boarded the bus at 5:00 PM. Though tickets are given for bus departing at printed time, you have to don your Indian shoes for a while and show your mettle to get on bus fighting with many others trying to make their way in.
Once in, we made our way to NY. As usual, a little nap and a lot of jokes kept us busy during the ride. This was also my second experience of freeways in America. Freeway are highest category of roads here, which often have 4 lanes in each direction. Speed achieved is equals to that of trains in India, 120kmph. As a transportaion engineer, this experience has little more than entertaining values for me. Anyway, we got down at Chinatown NY at 9:30 PM.
We wandered away for a while in search of nearest subway (local trains of NY) station to no avail. We asked for help, only to realise that we couldn't understand Chinese and Chinese English! Wonder how these people survive in US? Well, so we called our hosts and found our way to nearest subway. Ticket here is $2 per ride, not distance based, unlike India. And the entry to platform is permitted to ticket holders only, avoiding the need for ticket-checker. So we were given magnetic stripe card, like Credit Card, which when passed in a slot allowes one entry. Trains in NY are like Bombay local trains. Indeed, NY is much like Bombay. More on this later.
We got out at the Times Square. This is most lively and glamourous place in NY. Times Square is a intersection of roads which is very developed for shopping. What an experience! You could see buildings as high as you can see on both sides of road. Lots of crowd and hustle-bustle and noise. If you have been to Cannaught Place in New Delhi then you will know what I am talking about. Coloured and decorated posters and hoarding all around you. And there were lots of stalls on each side for variety of small things from posters to hand-made sketch to spray painting to honeyed nuts! This place is perennially crowded by tourists. Thats where we saw NYPD - New York Police Department - which are particularly know in US for their efficiency. Well, it was night 11PM by this time, so we decided to head for our stay.
Rohit and Shyam, our hosts, are students at City College of NY, sharing an apartment. They picked us up from the subway station 168th street. Let me, at this point, tell you the geographics of NY. NY is a collection of five islands surrounded by Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean. Main tourism attraction and developed place is Manhattan. Whole Manhattan is divided in grids, with "streets" (1 to 200+) and "avenues" (1 to 8) criss-crossing each other. After a little break, we walked to Washington Bridge. That's when we first saw NYC in nightlight. Multiple layers of roads, curving & crossing ramps, great length of greenery, fast running cars and cold air from Hudson River presented magnificent site. All bridges connecting five islands in NY are cable suspension bridges, and whole bridge used to vibrate whenever a heavy truck passed on it.
That night we slept at 1:30AM after finalizing our itenary for the next day with help of expert advises from Rohit & Shyam. A great day lies ahead.
DAY 2 - Saturday 27th, 2004The second day started with us waking up lazily at 7AM plannig to leave at 9 for the tour. We had subway & NY maps ready with us and itenary was well planned thanks to our hosts at NYC. And in need, we had their cell number, just in case if we get lost! So went to nearest subway and purchased our daily unlimited subway travel pass for $7. Like I said earlier, this city is very much like Bombay. Hence we weren't surprised, in retrospect, to see two people blaking the train ticket while they somehow "fixed" the pass vending machine. Later we got passes and reached to South Ferry, our destination for Satute of Liberty. Did I tell you that I caught my hands in the automatic closing doors of train, luckily to be cleared without injury?
We walked to Battery Park to be welcomed by warm and sunny day for our wonderfull trip. There was little fog, which we later found was artificially created - don't know why?, which dimly provided us the glimps of Staute of Liberty farther in the Atlantic Ocean. Asking people here and there, we purchased our tickets and occupied our postions in the line waiting to be boarded on the ferry taking us to Statue of Liberty island. There were couple of Indian groups in the long queue, which was intercepted by few artist-cum-beggers. Incidently we had a Indian tourist group of 5-6 noticeable guys just ahead of us in line that attracted them (artists) to play Indian tunes. To out utter surprise and shock, one man played Indian National Anthem on violen, while other sang "Main tumse pyar karata hoon" in Hindi, explaining other people its literal translation. Not to be outdone, third man played "Mera joota he japani" on his inverted steel oval type of instrument. My friend gave some coins to him for playing his favourite song. After interesting wait for half an hour in line, we boarded a ferry and climbed to the top. Soon we were moving away from NYC towards Statue of Liberty. Though trip was only 15 minutes long, we experienced great skyline of NY and zooming-in view of the great monument of American Independence. Usually one is allowed to reach up crown of the statue by internal staircase, this was closed after terrorists bombing of Spetember 11th. It is said that the Statue is 22 storey high. The island was not very special, but surrounded by sea the view was very refreshing because of morning air.
After a while we departed back to Battery Park. This was about 2PM. Then we walked towards out next destination, the World Trade Center site. Walking in NYC on such weather-friendly day with tall buildings arround you is no less fun in itself. Soon we reached the place where humanity had suffered a severe blow not so long ago. The site is not very interesting now as such, but has big emotional issues. Currenly this place is geared for further construction and land is occupied with construction machinary and materials. Nearby, World Financial Center houses the memorial for the victims and the reconstruction plan for the WTC. This is a beautiful building and exhibits the timeline of events and efforts in selecting and implementing the memorial building that is planned to be constructed at WTC's place.
We next reached the famous Wall Street which encompasses the NY Stock Exchange, the first in the world. It being a Saturday, we just spent half-an-hour walking past the street and observed the NYSE from outside only. It was about 3PM now and we needed good lunch next. Well, fortunately for us, we found some good and cheap Indian restaurant, Bengal Curry. We had proper dhaba style naan and vegetables to our hearts content in just $4, much cheaper compared to Boston. Next stop for our tour was at Empire State Building.
As I mentioned earlier NY is just place is experience the magnificence of glamour, and all buildings compete with each other to force you break your neck. Nevertheless, the Empire State Building occupies the honor of achieving so, after the unfortunate collapse of twin-towers. This 109 floor tower has the power of humbling anyone not by its sheer size but also by beauty and aura. No doubt we had to wait for one hour to catch the lift to reach top most floor we were allowed to go, 86th floor. Actually one can not go higher than that since tower just steeply sharpens after that and doen not cantain floors, literally. On the 80th floor, we were photographed, the purpose of which we kept debating if it were for security reasons or for revenue collection, to realise later that later opinion was right. They were trying to sell that in $15, a ridiculously high price when one can get use and throw cameras for 27 pictures in $7! Nevertheless, the view of NYC at twilight and night was just superb and beyond all sensations. Temperature was low at this altitude, while we really felt pain in our ears while going up by lift. The only problem for me was now that every thing just looked same to me at this hight! And yes, we also experienced the 'Skyride' of NYC. This is great concept which gives your near-real simulation of NYC travel through air! We were seated on the chairs attached to movable floor, and lifesize screen ahead us moved with conjugation with floor and sounds to create sensation as if we were in helicopters. Zooming in-out, ups and down, tilting and avoiding buildings was all surprisingly real. A great value of money if you can't afford the real helicopters. And of course, we kept finding Indians wherever we went.
Next we headed to Times Square again, this time for Madame Tussad's wax museum. If you don't know what I am talking about, then here it is. Somebody called Madame Tussad - I don't know if their is any real person of this name - has a series of wax museums in London, HongKong, Las Vagas and NYC where they have life size extraordinarily real looking wax statues of famous personalities across the world. And believe me they are truely life life, you just can't tell the difference between real person and the statue! Indian personalities included are Mahatma Gandhi and Amitabh Bachchan. Actually we didn't go to the museus for its high fare and lack of time. Nonetheless we managed to capture few of dummies in our cameras before Rohit and Shyam joined us for the dinner. We had a greatly tasty dinner and headed back to their home for the good night's sleep after a happy seocnd day. Plans for day three? Ready already. Good night.
DAY 3 - Sunday 28th, 2004On Sunday, we decided to finish of some of the remaining tourist attractions before we head back to our home in Boston. First came the Central Park. This is a very large chunk of greenery spread over miles on both directions located exactly in the middle of Manhattan. And that was the first place we could seek solitude in bustling NYC. Central Park is not very decorative per se in terms of trees and plantations but its pristince yet natural beauty is what attracts many tourists and New Yorkers to spend few calm moments and have a healthy fresh air in this highly polluted city. We visited a couple of lakes in the park for a while. After that while I relished the ecstacy of swinging on kid's swing after my last one about six years ago, my friends photographed variuous avian species flocking the park. However ridiculous it may sound, I must admit that I will remember that swing for long! Because of short availability of time we headed next to United Nations.
UN is an international organization aimed to develop peace and collaboration among nations of the world. UN offices in NYC resides few of its influencial suborganizations including General Assembly Hall and Security Council Chamber. As usually with all buildings in NY, about 50 storey UN holds working and administrave offices for various nations and UN. On the way we saw the building of Indian mission to UN, which was closed due to Sunday. One special, if not extraordinary, point to make here is that UN is outside of USA border. So as to say, property of UN is international territory and not under USA but belongs to all member nations. Hence it keeps its security and other facilities like fire fighting and electricty generation separate from US. After through security checks we went in and clubbed into a guided tour for $7 per person. Tour was lead by UN officials, a russian in our case, who showed us General Assembly hall - where UN holds its general meetings for all 190+ members - and Security Council Chambers - where most of international security related decisions are taken by a committee of 15 nations, 5 permanent and 10 yearly selected.
UN doen't have a lot of money simply because as a collective organizations UN is financially and otherwise dependent on its member nations. Thus though those halls and chambers were not very appealing in aesthetics or luxury as one would expect a place where world leaders preside should be, there was an air of importance of this place in the history of world and thereby humankind. Unfortunately, if that is so, many chairs were broken while main chairs for the national heads were not better than plastic chairs in our lawns! Nevertheless, walls were decorated by paintings of famous painters - donated by various nations. We also witnessed many gifts from nations to UN including ivory monument from china, which I particularily remembered. On the display was also Nobel Peace Prize of Kofi Annan, in contrast with reminders of world's ghastly human tragedy in form of radioactively decayed peices of clothes, metal, glass and stone statute from Hiroshima & Nagasaki in Japan. Tour ended with the information that some English movie "Interprator is being filmed in General Assembly on that day in which Nicole Kidman is actress.
About 2PM by this time, we directly went for lunch to a Indian restaurant that we saw on our way to UN, the 'Mallika'. This was little costlier than yesterday's but the owner was impressed (or pitied?) by us being student from MIT and offered us free pakodas! Well, time to wrap up now. We next went to Chanatown to purchase our return ticket for 5:30PM bus. After securing that, we wandered off to nearby Manhattan Bridge overlooking Hudson river. A beautiful place to feel. We occupied our seats in bus at 5:30 and bid farewell to NYC and carrying with us in collection more than 125 pictures for the trip.
Bus dropped us at Boston in night 9:30PM, and we were back home at 10:30PM. Great journey! Except Brookleyn bridge we nearly visited all major attractions of NYC. Anyway, one can never see a place like this in two days. May be next time. Indians kept smiling on us wherever we went in NY. Many were NRIs or their parents, gratification on their face on familier colour & face was very satisfying.
Why NYC is very much like Bombay?This city dulled the image of America that I had percieved in Boston a little and gave me (sadistic) satisfaction that we are not far behind! Few things that I noticed in NY as first time in US are: beggers in the train, uncleaned trains and platforms, dirty roads and garbage in the streets, stinking garbage bags lying uncleared, pothols on the roads, unorganised traffic, astray padestrians, commotion on intersections, disregard of traffic signals, honking of car's horns, open fruit vendors, cycle rikshaw on the roads, street side vendors for all what you can imagine..... Nevertheless, I liked the city. Lets see what will be next destination?
I hope you enjoyed the dissertation!