Some 30+ hours ago, I embarked on a long journey from Seattle to Chennai, a place where I spent the first 19 years of my life. (yes, I added the 19 years to sound dramatic). I’m a little disappointed that I don’t quite feel like I’m home. Seattle feels like home, not Chennai 
More on that later and its probably because I’ve only been here a few hours and am a little tired.
Let me break up my journey into different stages so that it helps me express myself better.
Pre-departure (Sunday)
I spent all of Sunday (well, since I woke up at noon) packing (not really) and watching Transformers 2 at the IMAX theater. It was definitely a treat to watch all the action on the big screen. This was followed by a graduation photo-session at the Seattle Center and Kerry Park. Some Thai food after that and I was all ready to pull an all-nighter and finish up packing and crash during the flight. I did manage to pull one and finish up everything that I wanted to do that night.
Departure (Monday)
My brother and I leave for the airport at 530 in the morning for a 7AM flight. Worked out pretty well since I got to the gate some 20 minutes before boarding. Just when I was about to board..err walk to the plane (it was tiny) I heard a PA that they were overbooked and looking for volunteers to take the next flight out. This was my third such offer within a week and I figured that I might as well make some money instead of wasting time in LA. The coupon was gold – I get free round-trip tickets anywhere within Umm-erica and no price cap. GOLD!
LAX (aka WTF airport)
I’ve been to LA before, on a road trip, and never quite found it as charming as some people say it is. Its hot, dusty and so on. The LAX airport is probably the worst airport in the United States. The domestic airport felt like a dingy rat hole and there were absolutely no directions on how to get to the international terminal (not rocket science but what the hell). The international terminal was pure chaos to say the least. Everything seemed so haphazard and it was filled way beyond its capacity. It felt like a bad prototype. I check-in and find out that I have the middle seat in the 3-4-3 seat configuration on a 16hr non-stop flight to Dubai. I curse and get myself a ceasar salad from McDees (yea, dont ask…) and board the flight. Oh and I also managed to see a ginormous Airbus A380 from down under, in the wild.
16 hours too long
I’ve never really been a fan of flying for too long. 4-5 hours is all I can take, but the Boeing 777-200 operated by Emirates is definitely one of a kind. The seat reclines really well, with a natural flow, every seat has a power outlet, USB outlet and an ethernet outlet. The in-flight entertainment system had a million movies in a million languages and some really new movies too. The food was great, the service was excellent and the 16 hours just went flying by (of course, Iwatched some 5 movies to help me through it). The plane flew up north from LA, through Canada, Greenland, Iceland, north pole, and then down to Dubai. In other words, it just flew straight up the globe and then down the other side, which was a first for me and definitely cool.
DBX aka. Dubai
My layover in Dubai was really short, about 90 mins. I had just enough time to walked from my arrival gate to the departure gate and board the flight. The airport was big, just like their obsession to build the biggest of everything in the middle of a freaking desert. I was not impressed at all. I’ve seen better and it was definitely not anywhere close to the ‘connection to the world’ that they claim to be. Also, 99.5% of the staff, passengers, etc were Indian. 95% of which were south indian. I think that we should just invade Dubai and take over…I mean officially.
DBX to MAA (aka. Dubai to Madras/Chennai)
The flight was terrible, the food was worse and my co-passengers were much much worse (and rude and everything in between). I’m not going to say anything more on that part of my trip. I just wish that I could have ‘teleported’ from Dubai.
MAA (aka. Chennai aka. hometown)
I thought 90F in Dubai at 9PM was bad. It was 33C (or ~92F for my metric-challenged friends) when I flew in this morning at 3AM!! The pilot called it a pleasant weather. I beg to differ. Security/health screens and Customs were a breeze and I was out of the airport in about 30 minutes. My good friend from high school (Kannan aka. SJ) picked me up from the airport and drove me home. I crashed for an hour or so while waiting for my parents to get home. Had some good Saravana Bhavan idlis and vadas, chatted with my friends for a while until a power failure abruptly end it all.
That completes my trip report. Stay tuned for my daily and city reports coming up soon. No jet lag so far.
