After a month of preparations, making lists and last minute frantic packing, I was finally at Mumbai CSI airport. I was on my way to the big apple, the land of dreams, off to get myself education, and a head-start in life. My immediately family saw me off at the airport and I headed towards immigration with mixed emotions. After a brief wait at the departure terminal, I was boarded into the flight that would take me to Paris. The flight took off as scheduled at 0215 and I, almost immediately fell into blissful sleep. When I woke up about 7 hours later, breakfast was being served aboard the aircraft. I launched into a quick heavy meal consisting of a piece of buttered bread, some paneer, cooked omlette style served with bread tempered with corriander leaves. The crew quickly cleared the empty trays and minutes later the captain announced that we would land at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport in quarter of an hour. The flight finally landed at Paris at 0735 local time, 40 minutes before scheduled arrival. The gates were quickly docked against the airplane doors and we embarked to find a couple of french immigration officials who examined our passport, visa and boarding passes of the connecting flight. The signboards at the airport quickly lead me to a large waiting area with a 20ft long LCD screen flashing the time and departure gate of all flights arriving and departing from that particular terminal. A helpful airport official took a look at my boarding pass and directed me to security check for my flight to Houston.
The officer at security check said 'bon jour' and I replied with a 'hello', she reminded me that I was in France and wen on to teach me 'bon jour', 'oui', 'merci' and 'bon voyage'. My hand baggage was x-rayed and the officer at the x-ray machine thought my box of lemon pickle was actually hair gel! Having walked through security, I was given directions to my departure gate. The whole 2E arrival and departure terminal has over 72 gates. It has a large shopping arena and an even bigger waiting arena! The waiting arena has a number of playstation 3 terminals that sony has set up for free, there are number of computer terminals that let you access the internet for a fee of 5 euros/hr. The airport has a large glass facade that allows plenty of sun light to stream in. There are a large number of coffee shops placed close to the waiting arena. I walked up to one of them and asked for a cappuccino. As the my coffee was being brewed, I chatted up with the guy. He didn't know much english and I didn't know any french, but we managed to talk about the weather and the rather deserted looking terminal. We quickly became acquaintances and he asked me to come by if I needed water (a bottle of water costs 3.7 euros at the airport). I had 7 hours to kill and I walked around to find a desolated place, away from the sun, to sit down & relax in. I plugged in my mp3 player and picked up the copy of reader's digest I was carrying. I read till I finished the reader's digest. The time was now 1130, I was hungry and sleepy. I quickly removed the paranthas my mother had lovingly packed and gobbled them up with a dash of lemon pickle. I was too apprehensive to catch some sleep at the airport, though loads of waiting passengers were sleeping. The airport has long sofas that let you lie down & sleep! I kept walking up and down the terminal each time I felt drowsy. I finally heard the announcement calling for passengers to board the flight to Houston.
Once through the line and into my flight, I quickly settled down hoping to go to sleep right away and make up for all the sleep I couldn't get at Paris airport. However, the crew decided to keep the windows open till they finished serving a light meal and my co-passenger, who happened to be carrying caviar kept getting up every half hour to get ice for storing his caviar. I finally got so frustrated, I asked him to take my seat on the aisle and jumped into his window seat, within minutes I was leaning on the window and enjoying much needed sleep. When I finally woke up, we were an hour from landing and instructions were being issued on how to fill up the customs forms. After circling around the airport waiting for a landing slot, we finally landed at 1935 local time. It took me a few minutes to get through immigration. I walked to baggage claim, collected my bags. I was directed to surprise baggage inspection. The officer asked me if I had 'jeera' or 'mirchi powder' in my bag. I lied with a no and he couldn't find any. After he cleared all my bags, I walked out into fresh american air!!
P.S: This blog is too long for me to re-read and look for typo or grammatical errors, forgive me for any!
