You can‘t really get lost in New York, the subway systems are superb minus the funky smells, and underground ‘scenery‘. The people you see underground all have their own story, from the homeless to very talented musicians and families that use these trains everyday.

Beware of the subway carriages which are empty. Foreigners as we were, thought we were lucky with an empty carriage for us to sit anywhere. Avoided by most people, we went in sat down and then looked at each other. What the hell was that smell in the air? A couple of people joined in and politely sat down without looking around, a few people laughed and pointed and plenty of people rushed out to another carriage.

We looked down to the very end of the carriage and saw a trolley, overflowing and scattered everywhere on the floor with junk, rubbish, blankets and ‘property’. At closer inspection, you could see a homeless man hidden beneath layers of ripped clothing peering out to us at the other end. Never had I saw something like this in my life, and I’ve been to South Africa twice not seeing something that compared to this. I could not stop staring, to me it was so bewildering and interesting at the same time for someone to live like that and call this their home. I wondered how he got this way, what his own story was. He was very old, is he even still alive now? I’ll never know.

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