National_Geographic_Traveller_India_May_2017

Voices | TRAVELLER’S CHECK
Go Between
LEARNING TO SAVOUR HYPHENATED SPACES
DURING A TRYST WITH A MEDIEVAL ENGLISH TOWN
Debashree MajuMDar
is a freelance writer and editor.
She can often be found plotting
yet another escape.
On my first and only visit to York a little more than a
year ago, I managed a cursory glance at its quaint
medieval magnificence. Ever since, I’ve been devising
plans of going back. The charm of these in-between
places—tiny towns, quiet cities—that you meet on your way to
longer, well-planned vacations, often linger long after you’ve
left. With York, the haunting has persisted.
More often than not a modern traveller’s itinerary is so
packed with these numerous stops to a carefully picked
destination that a thought is rarely spared about traversing
these sometimes prominent, sometimes nondescript worlds.
They often teem with stories, experiences, and secrets of their
own. In our case it was merely happenstance that led us to York.
We were headed to Scotland for a road trip after a brief stay in
London. York, which falls almost halfway between London and
Edinburgh, sounded like the perfect place to meet a friend who
was set to join us.
These resting places or stopovers rarely get a fair chance. One
checks out of the airport or train station, grabs dinner on the
way to the hotel, and succumbs to exhaustion only to chase that
early exit the next morning. But given a chance, or a few waking
hours, these hyphenated spaces could be mined for insight and
wonder into a world unknown.
The unfamiliar in York unspooled as we made our way to
our address for the night through its residential quarters. A
gust of cold wind and drizzle greeted us at the precincts of the
time-worn walled city. That night the sounds of a heaving river
York, U.K.
were evident. Parking lots lay submerged, a few abandoned
cars disappeared under water. It was November 2015, just
about a month before the Ouse would breach its banks and
wash the whole city away. It would be months before tourists
returned to marvel at its cathedrals and castles. York that
night seemed like a threatening place, its streets deserted,
the wind howling, and its residents visible only through
warmly lit glass windows. Its unique reputation for being
the most haunted European city, which it was awarded
in 2002 by the Ghost Research Foundation International,
seemed accurate.
Stormy weather and eerie warnings notwithstanding, we
stepped out for a peek into the microcosm that York packs
within itself. I hugged myself against the merciless, icy lashes
as we walked through the dimly-lit alleyways that crisscrossed
The Shambles, York’s and one of Britain’s most iconic
streets. Lined with half-timbered 15th-century dwellings, The
Shambles derives its name from the Saxon shamel, meaning
slaughterhouse. Before the chic boutiques, lace-lined tea
rooms, chocolatiers, and trendy pubs took over, the street used
to be home to butchers who hung their meat for display a couple
of hundred years ago.
It’s surprising what an hour’s rambling can reveal about a
town. If familiar, in an Indian town for instance, one could step
out for tea or samosa and return with a wealth of information
about life in the neighbourhood following an exchange with the
local chaiwallah. If unfamiliar, and away from home, one could
feel overwhelmed by the revelations of a place that one had
hardly considered including in one’s journey. I wandered along
the snickets around the imposing Gothic York Minster, whose
silhouette towered against the inky skies giving it a shadowy,
desolate air. I remember coming to sudden halts, my mouth
agape, staring at the crumbling Tudor dens that appeared to
close in over our heads, stirred with child-like curiosity. The
houses came closest to resembling the tattered lithograph
print-filled books from my girlhood.
On the wintry night we walked down its paths, York revealed
its essence in little bursts—a couple of still open pubs providing
shelter to locals and travellers, and homeless musicians playing
to an invisible audience in the the bitter cold outside. Like all
cities with an enduring character, York is marked by layers
of history and stark contrasts. It’s a place where it would
be right to want to “stop all the clocks,” much like how its native
W.H. Auden had once written. With its many ghosts of present
and past, it continues to haunt me for not staying, for having
resisted its singular charms. I’m impatient to return to it—
not to dash through it again as a halfway stop but to savour
it as a destination.
G01XM/ISTOCK
16 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2017