My first U.S. trip – Stay at Minneapolis and return

Travel season throws surprises at all places, U.S is no different. I’d like to cite this example, to prove that point. I opted to travel to Minneapolis from Seattle which, on a direct route is about 3hours of flight journey. Instead the itinerary I got took me to Dallas which is in a totally different direction all together and in itself was a 3.5hrs journey and after a wait of about 1.5hours at Dallas I was routed to Minneapolis, again a 2.5hrs journey. So if you try to make a mind map, I flew the sides AB and BC of a near equilateral triangle ABC, when I should be flying just the side AC directly. A chat with Deepu sometime before revealed that during holiday season this is quite common to happen. I seemed to be lucky enough only to go down the sides of an equilateral triangle, some are known to have flown the redundant sides of quite an acute angled triangle for 6hrs when the shortest side could have taken them to their destination in 1hr. Pity them. No more math, as I am getting closer to describe my stay at Divya-Vamsi’s place and Divya hated that subject ever since she learnt how it was spelt and continues to do so. Given the acute lack of sleep the night before, I really hated the journey that day, particularly the Seattle-Dallas portion of it, as my body nauseated owing to fatigue and sleeplessness.

Divya was a constant over-the-air advisory for me throughout this trip, where she was the one to welcome me (over phone of course) even before the airport staff announcements at all destinations including Mumbai, London, Seattle, Dallas and Minneapolis of course. As I landed in Minneapolis and collected my bags (which contained more than half the items for Divya and all those items remained majorly in-tact), Vamsi and Divya approached the curb side pick-up point right in front of where I was to exit out. Vamsi was quick to dump the bags into the boot and off we exited, headed to their apartment. It’s a 20min drive and Vamsi was good at the wheel, but I must admit I was always jittery as he drove past the yellow lights while I anticipated that he’d slow down and halt. However, his timing was perfect and never were we moving on red for sure.

The apartment was cute and tidy, just about the thing needed for a young couple. It had all that is needed (except for a few items like TV/TV stand that are debatable) and nothing that is not needed. After I freshened up, we all sat down for dinner and Divya was more than proud to show-off her culinary skills with shrimp fry, methi-chicken and sambar and all of them were delicious. With a plan decided for the next day, we hit bed. The next two days were filled with some relaxed shopping/window shopping at the local malls, premium outlets zone as well at Mall of America, checking out food outlets (loved the Lucé Pizza store) and enjoying some good situational comedy shared by Vamsi all throughout. My customary visits to Walmart, Macy’s and McDonalds too happened here. The evening before my departure to India all three sat together to stuff the return bags with all the shopped stuff. Quite contrary to my expectations we are overweight by an order, thanks to the extra set of dinner plates and dishes Deepthi insisted. Most chocolates were the ones to get the first omission, followed by dove soap stack, followed by nuts tins. The rest was allegedly ‘indispensible’ if I were to see the light of the day once I return home. So that meant stuffing the carry-on as tightly as I could as well as my laptop bag (this really reminded me of journey to and fro Germany while as a student, though I’d admit that this wasn’t as bad as that was where I was wearing literally six shirts. Everyone has their share of fun, experimentation and of course innovation as a student, won’t they?).

After having a sumptuous breakfast, boxed lunch for consumption at airport, baggage zipped and stove in the car boot, we set out to Minneapolis Airport. The plan was that Vamsi and Divya would be circling outside the airport and if in case any items were to be removed because of excess weight, upon a call they’d return and collect the same back to their home. Luckily at the check-in there wasn’t any problem and the baggage was checked-in for collection at Hyderabad. The flights to Chicago and from there to London were uneventful and normal. Just that I went overboard and strained my eyes with two movies back to back in the flight to London from Chicago which fatigued me certainly. At London I bought my permissible quota of liquor to treat the tongue buds of those yearning for an imported malt tinge on them and set out to depart to Hyderabad. After I landed in Hyderabad, true to my hopes, customs was no hassle and I’m out of the Hyderabad airport fairly quickly. As I arrive towing my luggage out of the arrival gate at around 4.50AM, I saw Noori Travels driver waiting from me with a name placard (I think it’s the first time I ever had a placard welcome out of airport – good or bad?). I took a cab drop to my home and controlling the temptation to take sleep, I decided to get ready for office just so I may synchronize my body rhythm with the rhythm of the life back here in Hyderabad.

Just when I began to feel what a smooth return home this was, I realized that I left my beloved watch behind at Minneapolis and soon after from inside the bedroom I heard my wife cry – ‘Oh God! The Correlle dish bowl in the baggage broke into pieces’! Only time will disclose what more got messed up.