Flight to America !!

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I was listening to some nice Arabic music and it totally brought the thoughts of belly dancer gorgeously, graciously dancing and almost made me change the topic to write about DUBAI and the UAE ... but I figured that how can I just move onto the last paradise I visited .. I have to start from my first trip , my first experience in real long distance and long duration travel.The year was 2001 , the memories come rushing in my mind although I was pretty young then but I still remember each and every detail as I was pretty excited about the trip, after all it was the first international trip I made.The month was April and the date was 24th, sachin tendulkar's birthday :)

The location also being the one which I always wanted to go to .. The United States of America!

The flight was at around 3 am from Mumbai Sahara International airport. Personally, the best part of the trip for me is the flights . When a flight takes off ..oh my god , the adrenalin rush I get is just something else.I feel the blood racing through my veins and heart beats going faster , mind trying to capture this feel for future reference. Pretty soon the flight did take off and I saw Mumbai, I had never seen before, the queens necklace as it is called , it appears like a necklace but they are actually lights in the dark night in the city that never sleeps.What was very enticing to me on board the flight were the options for movies , you had your own screen where you could play games and listen to music.I had decided I am not going to sleep for the 17 hours of flight and I did manage to be awake through most of it.I behaved just like a typical Gujju is expected to behave. Gujju's have this tendency to pounce upon anything and everything that is free.So apart from all the exquisite meals I got , I had around 14 cans of diet Pepsi on the flight because they were free !! The pretty air hostesses did not seemed surprised or worried which made me feel they had passengers like me daily. I had gone along with my mom and was handling everything from checking in to managing baggage , it made me feel like a grown up , say a man ! :)

We stopped at Frankfurt after which we hopped onto another flight which took us to Atlanta,Georgia which is the hub for the delta airlines , the one we were travelling. It was all very new and amazing to me , on Frankfurt airport I was exposed to the small German cars I could see passing outside through a huge glass window, followed by some in depth research I did on world famous liquors. Now that I think of it,I was just like 14 years :) ! finally some more hours onto another flight and we heard the captain saying "welcome to america , we are about to land in Atlanta ,please fasten your seat belts " .I was extremely delighted to hear that and was all geared up for the sight.Finally after landing , not only was I excited but was hungry too ..the first thing that I ordered was a dominoes pizza but it wasn't the local one this time and trust me it did not taste local either . I have always felt this about Dominoes , that it's taste differs from country to country , whereas Pizza Hut has a standardized taste globally . This I am telling you of personal experiences .

Anyways , our final destination in the first leg of US was Houston ,Texas,which by the way strangely pronounced as "youston",I did know that as I had heard my cousins say it but had I not I would have surely faltered.The Atlanta airport was huge and it had a train (subway as they call it there ) to travel from one gate to another . it has gates from A right upto T with 40 places in each from where flights take -off .Well , the interesting thing I saw in the subway was a young american couple making out and this kind of visuals as you know, we are totally deprived of in India . Ha ha , so there I was a young boy staring at that couple , trying to figure out what exactly is happening ,while the rest of the crowd was hardly bothered or concerned and my mom chose to look the other way, obviously shying away from facing me, she did not know her kid was more intelligent and mentally developed than she thought he was :P. That was the moment I felt that I am definitely no longer in India .

We did then board our 2 hour flight to Houston ,Texas and there we had the whole family of ours waiting to receive us. This was just how my journey was from India to the US but it was something crucial I wanted to share as it is eventually always " the journey that matters more than the end or the start " as quoted by Linkin Park.

lot more to come regarding the US trip in 2001 .. I am still contemplating whether to juggle between countries and places or whether to finish one country and then move onto the next. Around 7-8 in my kitty and of course the national places which are altogether left.so kindly comments regarding the course of action,that would be appreciated . thank you for your time , good morning world and good night chintan for now :)