A journey of thousands of miles began with a well....a small chat!

As I had mentioned it here that 3 of us planned to go to the US for a trip. Now, a little background of how this trip happened! My one friend and I were just discussing over gtalk that it has been a long time since all of us went out together somewhere, the last trip being to Kerala in December 2007, where we celebrated the new year too!

We continued talking and discovered that both of us are free in the last week of August and our third friend is also planning to take a leave that time around. Both of us thought of some options like Andaman or North East and similar stuff.

He suddenly said that we should go to the US! I was like, come on...thats never gonna happen. He said if he give ourselves 2 weeks instead of a week, we can surely cover US. With one of another very close friend in San Francisco, it was workable and he can also join in. I could see the feasibility of the plan and ended the conversation by gaining some time.

After contemplating options, financial considerations etc, we planned to go ahead the US plan. We planned to cover 5 cities - New York, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The list was finalised after many talks over the gtalk and phone calls and google search and what not! Same was the case with flight bookings, hotel bookings, car booking (we planned to drive from LA to SFO) amongst other things. Also, both of my other friends were flying from Delhi and I was to fly out a day later from Kolkata as I had my end term exams for the 4th term.

Finally, Aug 22 dawned and I had my one of the toughest paper! In the evening, I was slated to leave for New York via Dubai as I took Emirates. As per convention, I reached the airport 3 hours prior to departure but this was really not needed. The check-in was through and through till destination and was smooth. There were very few people everywhere and so was the immigration.

The immigration officer asked very routine questions about why I am going, whats my current status etc. After all this routine stuff, I reached the waiting lounge. Since I had 2 hours to my disposal, I decided to call my family and folks and friends.

When I was done with my talking, I looked around the airport (and thought about the preceding areas) and felt sad at the pathetic condition of our airports. I still wonder why other countries have such amazing airports and why cant be the same with out own airports??!!

Well, finally the boarding was announced and it was a small aircraft for the Kolkata-Dubai leg with 2-4-2 configuration. The economy of Emirates is good! And I was pleasantly surprised by the leg room offered by them.

The flight took off and thanks to my Asian Vegetarian meal option (it was a special meal), I got my dinner pretty fast. In the meanwhile, I enjoyed the entertainment system by watching a movie and listening to some songs. Moreover, it was just 5 hour journey and I had planned not to sleep on this leg of the journey so as to tire myself for the next one, sleep there and reach US absolutely fresh! Moreover, the food is pretty good by any standard and the quantity was adequate.

We reached Dubai before time and it is just amazing to see the area over which the Dubai airport has been built. There are atleast 4 runways there and I saw another aircraft just landing besides us and another one taking off at the far end when we ended taxiing. A bus carried us to our terminal which seemed to be like in another world. We kept moving and moving passing infinite aircrafts parked at the airport. It was a good 15 minute drive before I entered the Emirates terminal building. The building is a massive structure and equally neat and clean. The unique point about it is that it has only Rolex clocks and that too one after every 200 m.

Now, this was the arrival departure and nowhere I could see the sign for transit or departure passengers. I almost reached the immigration and here I finally saw an Emirates help desk. He guided me to take the lift and go to the next floor and then directions could help me to reach my gate for the flight to NY.

When I went inside the lift, man...it was huge. The lift was designed to carry 120 passengers at one time and here I was alone in it. Its amazing to see the engineering marvels in Dubai. Upon reaching the floor, I could see the departure gate signs but since its a massive airport I reached my gate after a 20 minute walk. Before hand, I knew that Dubai Airport offers free Wi-fi and I thought of updating my folks about it. Since it was just a 2 hour transit, there was nothing else which could be done. Ya, I did check out some duty-free shops :)

My boarding was announced on time but the flight was delayed by 45 minutes due to an incoming connecting flight getting delayed. The moment I hit my seat here, I slept off; only to be woken by the hostess to offer me my another meal. I ate a little bit and slept off in deep sleep.

Bad weather caused some bad jerks and I woke up at that time. The view inside the aircraft was night like. The aircraft was pitch dark and they even simulated night by lighting up stars in the roof! Since, I was too tired, I slept again but the hostess woke me up again, this time for the breakfast. Now, in the breakfast I got the least expected item - 'Poha', a rice dish which I just love to eat.

In an hour or so, I heard the announcement by the pilot, "We are going to land at the JFK, New York in some time now." Yippee...I was finally here! :)