The weekend after the show, my sister Su tucks me under her wing and drives off to New York City. We’re spending two nights with friends in Long Island. For the first time in months I don’t have a giant black cloud of deadlines perched directly over my head, wow! I can’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed.

Even though my favourite activity is lying around doing nothing, our friends, being sensible, tell us we have two choices for entertainment: the Chihuly exhibition at the Botanical Gardens or a walk on the High Line. It’s a difficult choice. Dale Chihuly is an amazing glass sculptor whose giant, glittering pieces look like God’s Own Collection of Organic Delights. But I visited the Gardens last year, whereas I’ve never been to the famous linear park that wriggles between the soaring peaks of south-western Manhattan. So that’s where we go.

The first hurdle is getting there. It takes us one whole hour of alternately crawling and speeding to get to the teeming streets of the city’s most densely populated borough. The park is a two-and-a-half kilometre stretch of walking space, built onto the foundation of a decommissioned elevated railway line. It was begun in 2009 and sections were opened to the public in stages, starting in 2011. Access is free. There are several entry points, accessible via stairs and elevators.

The second hurdle is finding a parking space. This is usually the cause of much stress and heartburn but — Hallelujah! A parked car draws away from a FREE SPACE just as we get to the W16th St entry point. After this, there are no more hurdles. We clamber up to the park level feeling like we’ve already conquered Everest. Everyone else there apparently feels the same way because there’s an atmosphere of celebration for no reason at all other than our shared presence, three storeys up in the air. Trees, flowers, bees, food-stalls, art, children, elderlies, Japanese tourists, dogs, sunbathers, joggers, bikers and selfie-takers, enjoy the miracle of walking through a city, listening to the roar of traffic beneath us, with no fear of being run over.

The four of us stroll at a leisurely pace. The buildings around us provide peep-hole views of fancy residences. There’s an almost-complete Zaha Hadid apartment-building that looks like an immense metal sculpture, stretched sideways and honeycombed with glass windows: we can see bathtubs and futuristic kitchen-interiors. There are pieces of mutant art such as Jon Rafman’s ‘The Swallowers Swallowed’: creature-morphing-into-human-morphing-back-into-creature. Giant murals painted onto the walls of buildings, such as Henry Taylor’s ‘The Floaters’: immense close-up of swimmers in a pool. There are benches and rest-areas. Vistas of the city spread away on one side and the Hudson River on the other.

We use the toilets, share an overpriced ice cream and avoid buying t-shirts before returning to street-level. As we clamber into our car, another car draws up. The driver beams. Hallelujah! Free parking! We pull away, smiling broadly.

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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