Today it will three whole years since I came to the US. It has been an exciting journey for me full of thrilling adventures, awesome sights and sounds and wonderful people.

Continuing with my space fever, I will sum up my feeling by using the opening quote from Star Trek – The Next Generation.

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Reading the recent post from weltanschauungs about his journey to US, I want to share a similar email that I wrote to my friends and folks back home.

My journey to USA could have resulted in what could be termed as a classic mistake of not checking you date of journey correctly. I was under the impression that my flight was on 6th August midnight when the ticket was actually on 5th August midnight. I discover this blunder on 5th August morning and all the hell breaks out. Though I had done all the packing, I had not done a few things like last minute shopping, final byes and one last packing. Then to do all this there was mad rush, effects of this was noticed only when I landed in US and started to unpack my stuff; I got a bowl with the lid back at homeL. There was also a lot of phone calls from my relatives and friends who thought that I was going on the next only to grumble when they learnt that I had already flown.

The flight was a wonderful experience. The name of the plane was ‘Konark’ and was a Boeing 747-400. My flight AI 123 took off from Mumbai then to Delhi and then to London and finally landed Chicago International Airport O’hare. The flight was half an hour late. So much for the technical details of the flight. I spend most of the time sleeping and trying not to think. Because the process of thinking was self defeating because each time I started to think, I would get afraid of what lay ahead – fear of unknown, emotional of leaving behind all the people whom I loved and spend by life and soon eyes would get blurred. Sometimes it was difficult to hold back the tears. So the best thing was to sleep and avoid thinking. Yes in between the sleeping and feeling emotional I did watch 2 movies shown in flight – Ice Age and one non descript hindi movie with saif ali and abhishek starring in it.

Once out at the airport at Chicago I did feel like shouting out – “One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind!” Got through the immigration and customs real quick. No hassles and real smooth. From Chicago to my final destination – Illinois State University, Normal (Yes the name of the place is Normal nothing abnormal about it or the name!) I had to take a connecting charter service – Peoria Charter Service. I missed the 3:00 pm service so I had to wait for the next service at 7:00 pm. This wait time of 4 hours at the airport was the first occasion for the so called culture shock or ‘Welcome to America’

The place was massive and relatively clean and neat. There seemed to be an order in all the chaos of people running to get their flights, waiting for their people to arrive and still others who had came to see their people off!. The place was full of people from almost very race in the world. Not to talk of the color. It really represents the ad of Benetton – “United Colors of Benetton’. You could also see people wearing all sorts of clothes from the classy suit and formal shoes to some torn half pants, t- shirt and chappals. I had never waited for 4 long hours anytime and I did not realize how fast the time went by. That wait was informational and very interesting.

Then it was time for the bus and I got out of the airport and waited for the bus to come along. The buses here are so different from the ones that we have in India. The buses are big, have air suspensions and air conditioned. The distance of 130.5 miles (210 Kilometers approx) covered in less than 2 hours and 40 mins that would mean that the bus would be doing an easy 70 kmph and best part is you sitting inside have no idea about this. In short the ride was fast and comfortable. It was 9:50 pm by the time I reached the place – Bone Student Centre where my friend would come to pick me up. It was chilly that day and I was quite happy to wear the suit. It kept me warm. By now I was tired and just wanted to get to the apartment and get some sleep and rest. Wait of 5 mins was now appearing to be ages. Finally my friend came and took me to his apartment. Finally I am in America. Yo man!