Montauk and the Sunrise!

The past weekend, being a long one, saw me do some unrealistic amount of driving, sleeping, eating and more sleeping. I had a blast on Saturday evening, attending Follies at Wharton, thanks to Kavitha. The show was nothing short of awesome and it was almost as good as Broadway. Like most other occasions, I was absolutely amazed by the creativity and the talent students in this country possess.

The show ended at 9pm. After grabbing a sandwich, I drove to New York City amidst mild snow to meet Amar, one of my other friends/travel-buddies/photo enthusiasts. After a short break for coffee, we started driving towards Montauk, the eastern most tip of New York state. It was about a 4 hour drive and one of the food stops we made became kind of interesting. It was about 3am and after exiting the freeway, we hesitantly slowed down at a couple of gas stations, to see if we could get something to munch, but we did not stop. Noticing all of this, a cop started following us out of suspicion and in a while, flashed his lights and pulled us over.

After initial pleasantries, he asked us if everything was ok. We told them we were looking for a 24-hour shop for a snack. Without answering, he asked where are we from. When I said Philadelphia, he lifted his eye brows and asked "What brings you here all the way from Philadelphia sir, that too at this time?". When I explained about our interest in photography and our plans to catch sunrise shots at Montauk, he must have decided we are crazy, not some gas-station thieves. He got my driver's license, ran some record checks and then let us go after giving us direction to a 24-hour 7-eleven in the neighborhood.

We then reached Montauk at about 5am and since the expected sunrise time was about 6.45am, we waited inside the cozy confines of my car. The temperature was about 25 deg F. At about 6am, the sky color at the horizon slowly changed to mild orange and we left the car and walked up to the shore. The next one hour was surreal. There was absolutely nothing that hindered our view of the horizon, as the sky became brighter and as the sun slowly rose. Every second was ethereal and made me realize the power of the sun like never before. But for the cold and the wind, it was undoubtedly a magical morning.

Here are some of the photos:

We then drove back and reached Philadelphia at about 4pm. I hardly knew what happened in the next 16 hours, as I went into an unstoppable sleep-streak from 5pm to 9am the following day. About 16 straight hours of heavenly sleep!

A weekend definitely well spent and I cherish every moment of it. Life is beautiful indeed!