Welcome to the United States of America!

Who am I to welcome anyone to the United States? The answer is I’m just a traveller who happens to be very fond of America – the land and the people. Just the other day, a good friend told me, ‘I’m not interested in going to America. Count me out.’ I felt sad. I knew he was thinking of politics. I told him, ‘Forget politics. There’s another America beyond it.’ Politics shouldn’t come between a traveller and a great civilisation. Politics changes. The land and its wonders and the people and their goodness remain. 

I once took a bus from Dallas, Texas, to Austin. The bus was going to a destination in Mexico. I found myself amid a remarkable company of people belonging to what Marx called the working class, both American and Mexican. It was a segment of America which a brief visitor will hardly encounter closely. Many were in their work clothes, smelling of sweat, the earth and work materials. Most were in high spirits. There was much shouting and loud laughter. Some had fallen asleep as soon as they sat down. The head of the young man who sat next to me fell upon my shoulder even before the bus started. The Mexicans were perhaps going home for a holiday, and their packets and parcels filled every space. I think I heard screams of piglets and the cackle of chickens. The bus driver was a young black-American woman. 

An incredible event happened as we were nearing the end of the three-hour drive to Austin. The driver pulled the bus to a stop in a bay and announced, ‘’Hey guys, I’ve lost my way.’’ She turned in her seat and sat looking at all of us. The bus belonged to a well-known travel fleet, and surely there was a GPS at work. The whole thing was inexplicable. But no one seemed perturbed. People seemed to understand it all. The conversation that followed between the driver and the passengers was in accents too complicated for me to understand. The amazing end result was that a man and a woman, one seated in front and the other at the back, who were high on something and had kept up a loud, shouted loving conversation between them, now went up to the driver, knelt beside her seat and guided her till the bus reached the terminal in Austin. Perhaps not everyone may relish such an experience, but to me, it was like a small but intimate door opening onto the reality of America. This wasn’t the America, so to speak, of self-driving cars. 

I had taken a bus instead of a flight to save money. America is expensive for the average visitor, more especially for the shoestring traveller. Budget travellers, even from wealthy countries, find America costly. Lodging, transport and food, central to a traveler’s budget, are the most challenging. Of course, this means I must do my pre-travel homework with extra care so I can handle this problem as well as possible. And, like my Austin trip, some solutions can be adventurous and exciting. 

Let me state what scares me most about travelling in the US – especially moving around in the big cities. It is none of the things one would normally worry about, like crime, the gun culture or intolerance. It’s the astounding scarcity of public restrooms. I’m a person of normal health and do not suffer from urinary or gastrointestinal issues. But the prospect of being unable to access a restroom when you need it while wandering through a huge city like New York is indeed scary. Leave alone the fact that the worry blocks me from having a cold beer. It even stops me from drinking enough water to stay hydrated as I keep moving, often under a hot sun. In India, as an Indian male, I can innovate makeshift solutions in an emergency. But not in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Washington DC where I’m an utter stranger and where Indian public space freedoms – of course undesirable – do not apply.  People will tell you that Starbucks lets anyone use its restrooms. But you need to locate Starbucks in the first place, and it could be two kilometres away. 

The shortage of restrooms in the big cities of a country described as the world’s most affluent nation is astounding. Believe it or not, New York City, with a population of 8.48 million and a daily influx of around 178,000 tourists, has only 973 operational restrooms. Of these, 77 per cent are in parks, and 20 per cent are in libraries. And only 8 of them work 24 hours. Here I cannot resist telling – perhaps repeating – my restroom experience in the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. I had found the library after a long search and gleefully gone to the restroom. I found the door unlocked and opened it to find a black American gentleman seated on the toilet, talking to himself animatedly. I apologised, hastily shut the door and took a seat at the reading table, waiting for the gentleman to come out. After over 30 minutes, when the restroom door remained closed, I decided to check again, only to find the gentleman in the same position and talking. After waiting a little longer, I told the lady in charge that I was waiting to use the restroom, but there seemed to be a problem, and could she please check? She readily went to the restroom, peeped in, and returned to tell me, with an apology, that a gentleman was using it. At that point, I quit, took a train to South Ferry, 20 kilometres away and went to the one restroom in New York that I was one hundred per cent sure would not fail me: the one at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. It was almost like getting home.

There is another aspect of America that I would like to caution visitors about, even as I extend this unilateral welcome. This especially applies to Indians who are used to a certain attention – even friendliness – in domestic air travel. The American domestic air travel environment has a touch of hustle and a certain harshness. You get the impression that the airlines take passengers for granted. The overall attitude has unhelpfulness written all over it. It could be capitalism expressing itself naturally in a monopolistic context or an inevitable reaction to the fatigue that haunts mass transportation. Whatever it is, visitors to the US from a country like India need to steel themselves somewhat while engaging with the US domestic air travel industry. My tip is: do not grumble, nor complain. Grin and bear it. Because you cannot escape flying in a country the size of America, where your destinations are often thousands of miles away. 

Once you manage to get such minor challenges under control, you find yourself in a great country that can overwhelm you by the amazing limitlessness of its skies and horizons, the stupendous variety and diversity of the land and the friendliness and courteousness of the people.  

America is vast, full stop. If you’re driving through any part of the Great Plains, for example, you’ll be so swallowed up by the infinity of the rolling plains that you will feel you’re in a surreal dream of eternity. If you’re lucky, you will run into giant rainbows whose both ends touch the ground and, if it’s evening, light up the landscape as if the moon has risen. The rainbow-glow of the American plains is the most other-worldly, magical light I’ve ever seen. If you’re lucky, you’ll also see a tornado making its tumultuous way in the distance and thank your stars that you are not in its path. 

Urban America is an experience unlike any other in the world, and each great city has earned its own special reputation. Los Angeles, for example, has its Hollywood halo. New York has its multicultural energy. Washington DC and its monuments carry the aura of American history and power.  It is equally celebrated as the city of great museums. For a short-term visitor, it’s a mammoth task to get to know even one of these cities well. But even a short acquaintance is a wonderful experience.

Wonders of nature like the Grand Canyon or man-made ones like Mount Rushmore are on the bucket list of every enthusiastic traveller and need no introduction. I wish to say that rural America, in itself, is an unforgettable experience. Once you wander into the interiors where thrive villages and towns whose populations are often less than four digits, the very memories of the metropolises fade away. You’re in a universe of calm and quiet, of unhurriedness and simplicity. Many travellers miss this America and these marvellous Americans. There is no war in their hearts. Their horses and sheep, pigs and poultry, dogs and cats and pickup trucks constitute an alien planet of peace. 

Even if you tried, you couldn’t quarrel with this America. Nor would you want to quarrel with the lady driver of the bus to Austin, or the man whose sleeping head rested on my shoulder. Not even the gentleman in the Harlem restroom who kept me waiting futilely. To me, they make up the human America. They are not at war with anyone. Meet them if you can. Welcome to the United States of America!