First International Flight - Part two

Dt: 09 March 2013.

continued from part one..

Dubai has a huge airport the biggest I had seen so far.There are hundreds of terminals at the airport and within minutes I was exposed to the architectural brilliance of this place. Dubai is a shopping hub and Emirates had made sure that to reach your connecting flight you go through all the shops in the airport.
Conceptually this is a great business idea as people spend significant time at airports .

So here I was going through all the shops as well as directions for my terminal.I walked almost 20 mins looking for terminals marked A before reaching a circle where there was a small arrow saying Terminals A downwards.(It read like thank you for walking so long and going through all our shops.Now your actual destination is downstairs ).I felt,OK marketing strategy you have  to live with it in today's world.

The shops were no less than treasures.It felt like Alibaba had found the password.'Khul Ja Sim Sim'.
If you had enough money in your pockets  then  you  would  have  bought  them   all. Watches,perfumes,dates,cars,silverware..you name it and they had it.

Somehow I said to myself.Next time bro .Lets find the terminal for now.So here I was going downstairs hoping to find a terminal somewhere.Alas I was led to a lift .What no terminals yet.The lifts took us to another floor.In the backdrop was a foutain lit by colored lights.Beautiful.




By this time I had no clue whatsoever about where I had actually started .Anyways out of the lifts.Did I reach my terminal .NO.


Surprise.You got to take a train .Wtf.Anyways after confirming twice dat I am indeed on the right way .I take the train.Felt like it took me back to where I first started .Why dont they give maps to all :-).

So once I reached the paltform I got down and was happy to see my terminal there.Could see my flight wiating there for me.

I soon boarded the flight .Same seat in this flight .Co passenger was a Pakistani.He was watching Comedy Circus.The show seemed to be quite popular.I decided to put on some music .Food was served.Just to prove a point to my friend had a beer on flight :-).Eight hour flight .Slept for the first 4 hours and then watched Jannat 2 followed by another Indonesian movie.

Landed in London on schedule.My college friend was waiting there to receive me.Good thing about travelling now is that you know that you have friends working all around the world :-).

So the trip documentation ends here ...

What happened in London will follow in the up coming blogs...:-)

First International Flight - Part one

Dt: 10 Feb 2013

Eventually  after so many years of existence, I finally got a chance to fly international. At times I would wonder whether this would be a business trip or a a personal vacation(the latter would have taken quite some years to come).But fate works in different ways and luckily  I got to come here to UK on a short business trip.

I was booked on an Emirates flight on 29 Jan.It was a connecting flight via Dubai. With all travel you have to plan well so that there are no hiccups on the day of travel.But the anxieties of leaving the country were so high that I concentrated more on the packing and less on the technicalities of reaching the airport on time.

So when I eventually called up Meru to book a cab on the eve of the travel they politely refused saying that all cabs were booked for the day.I called up TabCab and booked a cab.The next morning at 5 though I got a real shock when Tabcab also refused to have booked a cab.Fortunately I called up Easycab and got a ride at the last moment.

I reached the airport along with Dad about 7 am ,3 hours before departure.We enquired for the visitor's gallery and were informed that it was closed for some reason.After spending some time outside the airport watching families bid adieu to their loved ones ,I decided to start my journey.

For first timers, you got to weigh your luggage at the airline counter ,get your boarding pass (u will get  a baggage claim card for check in luggage),attach tags to your cabin luggage(mandatory for security checks).I got my boarding pass met my Dad one more time before proceeding for Immigration.You got to fill a form for immigration and quickly join the queue. Once immigration is done you will be asked to proceed for security checks .Once you clear security you have to wait for your flight announcements.

The flight was delayed but once the announcements were made I quickly boarded the flight.While boarding make sure that you have your ticket n passport handy.Once I entered the flight I realised that I had been allocated the aisle seat on the first row of a new compartment(or whatever you call it).This is a good seat as you have the flexibility to move out, as well as have more leg space, along with the air hostess in close proximity.Air hostess in our section was beautiful and looked as if she was European.

Emirates was good at hospitality with newspapers & refreshments for all.Soon the flight took off .It was a smooth take off.Missed the windows but there were cameras attached to the flight giving a pilots view of the takeoff on the monitors.All hopes of having a good co passenger were dashed when an old Englishman took the seat next to me .We exchanged pleasantries during breakfast and then didnt talk for much of the flight.

Emirates' in flight entertainment is one of the best (they claim and call it AIR ).It had a wide variety of movies ,television shows from across the world and music as well.It took me around half an hour to choose from the variety which  was on offer.Since it was only 3-4 hour flight I eventually decided to watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S. There were 3 or 4 episodes ,probably season 3.It took me some time to figure out how to get the screen attached to your side to work despite there being graphical instructions for the same .But finally managed to get that working.

Once the take off and refreshments are done the flight is nothing different  to a private bus & you have to just wait for the plane to land to have anything worthy to do.And so it landed after few hours at Dubai.I got another shock when the air hostess with European looks made a landing announcement in Hindi so pure that you would have to say that she was an Indian.

So here I was in Dubai .The UAE ,effectively became the first foreign country where I set foot ;-) It was just the beginning of a very long day .Lets look at the Dubai leg in Part two.