los angeles enroute to tahiti...

it was an unusually warm and rainy morning in dc as i headed out to the dulles airport. i spent the better part of the morning packing (my stuff included a pocket knife, now that tsa lets you carry one onboard. with my profile, you’d think it’s a bad idea!). security is a breeze and after a quick breakfast at dulles and a slight delay of 30 mins, i am on my way to los angeles on united flight 209. the flight is uneventful and i catch a ton of sleep. guess it was the exhaustion from all the weeks of beach time at work!


i had 5 hours to kill at lax before my late night flight to papeete (tahiti). i relax at the air new zealand lounge and dig into some beef lasagna and a glass of pinot. i don’t usually mix flying and alcohol (a past bad experience taught me a valuable lesson!) but since i was on vacation, what the heck! its now time to check my email one last time.

the air new zealand flight to papeete (~ flying time of 9 hours) had interesting demographics. the guy sitting next to me was an ex-sailor from sweden and resembled a sadhu meditating on the banks of the ganges at varanasi (the beard, sling bag et all). apparently, after spending all his life watching places f1rom sea, he decided to actually set foot on all of them after retiring. “indian people sleep good” was the dude’s comment with a big smile when i got up the next morning, as we were about to land in papeete. guess he forgot that i mentioned i was an american (allright guys! a little bit of paperwork is still pending!)

the papeete aiport is anything but ordinary. flower girls greeted passengers and a live band in traditional wear played what sounded like local tahitian music (this, at 5 in the morning!). the immigration officer struggled a bit with my indian passport before smiling and letting me go (i threw at her the two french words i mastered - “bon jour” and “massi”). it was a pleasant 24 degrees celsius as i switched to an air moorea flight (a small 16 seater plane) to fly to the neighboring island of moorea. It took all of 8 minutes to get there.