The Journey There

The First Day, They Meet Each Other

The first thing he sees when he steps off the station is the pink camouflage-patterned backpack. It's not the only piece of luggage leaning against the wall in the arrival hall, or for that matter, the only backpack. But the fact that it has a camouflage pattern, which usually comes in shades of green or brown, makes it so eye-catching. The backpack stands out with its color among all the other baggage with their brown and black colors. He doesn't know it yet, but he will see the that backpack again. The train station is noisy and crowded, trains are delayed and canceled, as usual. Passengers jostle, children who are not entirely happy follow their parents or families. After much searching, he finally finds the bus that will take him to the starting point of his journey. It's yellow and surprisingly un-new.

She's sitting on the bus. She's about to embark on an adventure. For the first time, she's going to follow a nature trail alone. She has chosen one of the slightly more challenging nature trails, which leads through the southern reach. She's quite confident she can handle this without any issues. She has food and equipment for a week. The trail will take her through forests and terrain that can only be traversed on foot. The path will also, for long stretches, run along a desolate coast, an archipelago with many smaller islands. Her backpack is in a pink camouflage pattern, which she bought herself with her saved money. There's another passenger with heavy luggage, a boy her age.

She wonders if he's also going along the nature trail. He looks friendly, she fantasizes.

In a few minutes, the bus will stop at the station that crosses the path she's intended to follow later. The girl wonders if the boy will get off there. It would be exciting to have company, even though she had initially decided that this would be an expedition, an adventure she would undertake alone. As she prepares to disembark, to her delight, she notices that the boy is doing the same.

The boy steps off at the station and watches the bus disappear into the distance; soon, only the remnants of a faint dust cloud are all that remind him that there was once a bus here. At first, he thinks he's alone at the bus stop, but besides himself, a few other passengers disembarked, including a cute girl. When he turns around, the girl is still there, busy arranging her belongings; it's her backpack that he saw earlier at the station.

His own backpack is rather plain green, practical and well-worn. His gear is carefully weighed to 25 kilograms, just as much as he expects he'll be able to carry, but also containing enough food and equipment for a week of hiking.