Be careful what you wish for!

I apologize for being late! Who am I kidding? Nobody cares!

CHAPTER 1
She always wanted to travel alone. But when she did..

Well the thing that I am late about (I should probably start organizing my thoughts before I start to write!!) is my long pending travelogue. The coolest thing I have ever been allowed to do (Yeah, you have to be ALLOWED!) is to travel alone to a far-away land. Though it would have been a lot more post-friendly if its was to Machu Picchu, Cairo or Baghdad, mine was exciting enough. It was to the United States of America, the U... ..SA.

I was supposed to be leaving India with my boss and travel back alone.
But with my mother's deepest prayers for a chaperone and all my bragging that I got to travel alone one way atleast, the universe conspired and aligned my travel date with another who was returning the same day. Thank you universe and your twisted logic too!

I wish I was born in the days of the nomads, when you didn't have to hold a VISA or a Passport to step into foreign land and could just go about as you please till you saved a young Prince and was honored by the King or accidentally trip up a caravan and be hanged. (Whatever) Well if had been born then, I need not have waited for three weeks to start my journey. But I was born in the uninteresting age of diplomacy and the UN, so wait I did. But the day did come!

I was at the Airport. It would have been my first getting out of the troposphere (that's the lowest portion of the earth's atmosphere for all you non-geeks), if I hadn't flown to Chennai for my VISA. Still it was my first international travel and I was excited, scared (Did I write that??? Scratch) and Cautious. I checked my Passport every 5 minutes. Actually I would check and after three minutes I would wonder If I checked the last time I was supposed to and check again. Oh and check again to make sure it was mine. Okay, I wasn't cautious I was paranoid.

Going back two hours (or 7 hours because my flight got slightly delayed by five hours), I was packing and there wasn't enough space in my suit case for the million shoes I wanted to carry, so I limited it to three. The damn things still wouldn't fit. In a moment of creative genius, I picked the highest heeled shoes out to wear and put the less space consuming ones inside. Clever me! (I can be so innovative, out-of-the-box thinker sometimes). If only I knew how much that one moment of wrong decision could turn bad...


Fast forwarding to the airport again, I reached filled out a few forms, went through a couple of gates. The Indian population's American dream and my high heeled shoes didn't make any of that easier. I stood for an hour in the most inhumane foot angle going through the million security checks. I didn't mind, I was traveling. Not just moving my mass from one town to another, not a couple of hundred miles... I was TRAVELING!

My travel was related to work. How I wished it would be more exciting!! Though was I prepared to get what I wished...