Hong Kong

‘What do I do?’. Two plane journeys and 2,340 miles from India, and I’m looking over to Hong Kong City at the tallest buildings I’ve ever seen. Hong Kong is made up of a number of islands; Kowloon, which I’m on, looks over to Hong Kong City’s skyline, captivated. I look at it for the first time and say to myself, out loud, ‘what do I do?’ – I can’t take a picture that’ll capture the panorama fairly, and the buildings are too exclusive to go and explore or play in just yet, so I just watch for now, mouth open.

I slept for most of the first day, owing to little rest on the journey (an hours lightning storm out of the window - terrifying and amazing - didn’t help). The next day I spent doing what I’d dreamt of for the past two weeks in India – swimming. I’m a rubbish swimmer, I’m not even particularly fond of water, but to be floating around freely, surrounded by beautiful skyscrapers reflecting the sky silver-blue, was a dream after the repressive heat of Delhi, tramping on hot stone and cracked earth all month.

Hong Kong is manic. Everything moves at triple speed here; walking, talking, even food preparation all moves super fast, and with precision. After a month of adjusting from Britain to India, arriving in the centre of Hong Kong is a huge rush - exciting, confusing, and overwhelming. I feel like I’m travelling to different worlds, not just countries. The landscape, architecture, language, people, history and culture all have a completely different and unique being, a world apart from what I’ve seen so far. I like the initial rush of excitement of seeing new parts of the world, the fear that I’m lost and have no idea what I’m doing here – but I’ll never get used to it.

Step 1 – find my feet again…