Travel to Destination

When i arrived to the Qatar airport, it was very bright and a bit hot though the time was 06:50. The connecting flight was scheduled 07:50 though there was an hour, i wanted to finish all the formalities as soon as i can. Mr.Ganesan who came with me in the flight, directed me to goto where the TRAVEL board was pointing, and went through the IMIGRATION way as he works in qatar. He was nice person i got aquainted with during my first flight. I rushed to the Security check and there was a long queue...After finishing the check and getting the boarding pass for the next flight, while that was in another big queue, I rushed to Gate 3. Qatar airport was beautiful inside and there were more than 16 Gates i suppose, whereas in chennai we have
only 7. Thanks for the Passport wallet i bought from Odessey for 250 bucks. It was of great help all the way carrying my passport and work permit all the way without any tension. I was made to wait at gate 3 for the Airport bus.

Once the bus arrived, all waiting over there boarded the bus and we were led to QR11 a much bigger flight than the one i travelled before. Since it was the same flight company, the interiors were same and so were the air hostess! But one difference in this flight was that, there were TVs at the back of each seat, I mean a TV for a person... That was cool and it was not an ordinary TV, it was an interactive TV. It had some 4 to 5 Live Tv channels, apart from that it had a lot of movies, songs, games... in all languages! In Tamil category there were two movies... Rendu & E. All the movies were pretty recent and hit movies. Once again breakfast was served in this flight as it was four hours we had our last food! But now it was not veg or omlette... It was Scrambled Eggs or Omlette!!! Oh God, what will the vegetarians do? Well only the main dish was omlette, the rest were veg, i mean fruit salad, burger, frui juice... This time too i didnt get the window seat..but i got the seat second from the window! so i had a good look thru the window. The flight was not quite full and there were many free seats as it was a weekday.

The Interactive TV had options to view the flight details too... So i switched to that i was really surprised that we were above 33,000 feet from sea level and the temperature was around -54 F. The ground speed showed up to be 576 Mph, which is nearly 920 Kmph...!!!! But apart from Take off and Landing, the journey inside the flight was like anyother travel in our hi-fi air bus. You are adviced to take water frequently during your flight, to keep your body adjusted to the varying pressure levels at that altitude. As we arrived over London, it was 7 hrs since we started from qatar! We couldn't get ground clearance immediately as there was heavy inbound traffic at heathrow airport... So the flight was circling in the sky about 10,000 feet. It was the most unforgettable experience of what i saw through the window. I saw those white clouds very close to the window and some very much below the flight. It was a beautiful experience when the flight passed thru a white cloud. Damn, i didnt have a camera in my phone, so that i could take a picture of that beautiful scene. Atlast after 15 minutes of circling, we landed and Heathrow airport...

It was a huge airport, i suppose that it took me some 15 minutes of walk to reach the imigration place. After all the formalities, I followed the sign to central bus station which took me around another 15 minutes within the airport. Atlast I found out the National Express to Newport and Got the tickets... It was for the first time i spent in pounds, it was a 2 and 1/2 hours journey and the ticket was 32 pounds!!! 2560 Rs...! At that time i decided, while you earn in pounds spend in pounds, dont calculate for each and everything in rupees!

My First Flight

Everthing happened like a dream, my manager called me and said, Congrats man... You are going onsite! It was due to my manager, that such an oppurtunity was created, in a project where there was no more oppurtunity for onsite. A must say a special thanks to Vijay, my manager for making it happen. As like others who get their first onsite oppurtunity, i was also excited and rendered speechless. The workpermit took one long month to be processed. After that things happened too fast, that i struggled a bit to keep me up with the situation. The visa stamping which i beleived would take 22 working days, was just a weeks process when it came for me. So i had hardly a week to purchase all things, shift my things back to my native and prepare myself. It was on the day before my travel that i was totally nervous as i had the fear of leaving back something. I packed up, or else weighed up I should say, everything cautious about the thing that the weight limit in flight is only 20kg. I managed to finish everything by 22:00 and went to sleep for 2 hours.

At 00:05 when i woke up, to my surprise all my tension has disappeared and i along with three of my room mates reached the Airport by a cab. It was my first time travel to airport. When i checked in my luggage, I was literally praying that the weight should be within the limits, but the display showed up as 25.8 kg. To my surprise, they didn't say anything and it was headed to the flight. Hope the early checkin saved me. There was immigration and security check after which i was asked to wait for the flight. It was 04:45 when i was called for boarding the flight... It was a long tunnel like passage, which led into the flight QR277 (Qatar Airways). I suggest that you must see atleast once, the air hostess in qatar airways...! I was a bit disappointed to be seated third from the window, but neverthless i could see outside the window. The flight was moving in the runway very slowly for about two or three minutes... and in sudden, it picked up speed and in fraction of seconds everything on the ground diminished in size. The feeling of take off was like being in a gaint titanic ship found in the amusement park, rocking back and forth. I was literally stuck back to seat and i didnt rather couldnot move anyways. After a while, the flight was stable and there was an annoncement from the captain, that we were flying 11,000 feet above the ground level.

There were displays, rather TVs I would say, for every 3 seats hanging from the top, which displayed all the flight info... It said that the outside temperature was around where the centigrade and farenheit scales meetup... It was an unforgettable experience to be in the first time flight. Then suddenly in the TV, came the picture of something i was very familiar with, it was OSCAR FILMS... I wondered what it has to do with over here... Then I realized that it was the movie Rendu being played up. In the flight, everybody was given a earphone which you can plug into the socket by the arm rest. It was time for breakfast... The air hostess asked eachone, VEG or OMLETTE. I chose omlette and a person near me Mr.Ganesan chose Veg. He is a middle aged guy working in Qatar. He gave me a good company in flight and taught about the things i needed to know in a flight journey. It took 4 hours to reach qatar and in the mean time, i had a good sleep. The temperature was so freezing that everybody was given a red blanket.

As we were nearing Qatar, the flights display once again showed up the altitude, ground map and the flight location, temperature etc. But One thing i didnt understand in the display was the picture of the airplane from the top with a pointer indicating in south west or sometimes west with kilometers display on it. I couldnt figure out what that was, I later came to know in my next flight, that it was the Mecca Pointer...For muslims to do their prayer in the direction of mecca. The landing was so smooth and i arrived at the qatar airport at 06:45 local time. Though it was early morning, the sun was up in the sky and it was a bit hot. Mr.Ganesan commented that "In tamil there is a saying Naai, Panri, Kaagam illadha oore kidayadhunu solluvanga, but in quatar even they dont live..." It was a complete desert except for the city, It is surviving only due to its natural resources... I was for the first time, in a totally foreign land and i was very cautious about where to go and what to do, in order to catch the connecting flight to London...