The thousand mile journey

I am on the flight back home after exactly a year. I am less than ten hours into the trip and I am already having an experience I am not going to forget. For beginners, lesson learnt – never book a connecting flight that is within an hour of each other. At the Atlanta international airport where I had my first connection from San Antonio to Dubai, I found myself running faster than Usain Bolt (like literally!) from my flight that landed at Atlanta at 9PM to catch my connection to Dubai that was at 9.40PM. It was so close that I had even made up my mind to look for alternate options, accommodation for the night etc etc etc.Look at the bright side, I got my workout for the day given the fact that both flights were on opposite sides of the airport. It must’ve easily been a mile’s walk that I covered in roughly 15 minutes. Not bad right? For the past month I was so busy waiting for this day to come that I did not even think how I was going to spend the next 14 days. I did not have a schedule, did not plan how I was going to allot time for all the people that mattered and more importantly, visit all the amazing food places in Chennai that have also spellbound me every time I go to those places.Well, really there’s not much you can do on a flight journey that’s about 15 hours other than watch something on the in-flight entertainment, creep up on people around you , gaze outside through the window and figure out whether it’s day or night (thank you time zone difference), or think about the purpose of life blah blah blah….just kidding. Of course, there’s the other option of “working from flight” (Yes it’s a term I invented for those workaholics that always HAVE to work no matter whether they are in the office, at home or in the bathroom) but trust me, people who know me well enough know that I don’t belong to this category. Oops I did it again. As is the case with most of my thought processes, I tend to digress from my main topic of discussion. All this free time on the flight helped me better organize my thoughts and write down what I am going to do over the next two weeks. Honestly, two weeks just doesn’t cut it. Just like back in school, I’m going to have to cut down on sleep to make up for some of the time I am losing to this time zone difference pain in the rear. Just off the top of my head, there’s four different cities that I have to cover, 5 families, 10 friend circles, a dozen restaurants and road side eateries, and not to forget, my visa stamping that needs to be taken care of.Maybe if I do at least 75% of this by the time I have to return back to my “current” home (San Antonio, Texas), I can put “strong organization and planning skills” on my resume? Ok the announcer on the com channel just said we are preparing for our descent into Dubai. I got another 6 hours to wait at Dubai (which I am excited about because the Dubai airport is absolutely beautiful and tons of places to explore), followed by one more three and a half hour flight to Chennai before I get to break into emotional tears on seeing mom and dad. For those of you reading my blogs, I’ll keep you posted on how my vacation turns out, as frequent and detailed as possible.Cheerio!K