Hello y’all. Good Morning.

Let’s jump into one of my experience which made me think of about figuring out a better way of traveling abroad.

I went for vacation to Kerala, India December,2017. I went for a mere 15 day vacation mainly to attend one of my friends marriage. As usual, I booked an economy class flight from Trivandrum, TRV to San Francisco,SFO by Qatar Airways(One of the best). My itinerary was TRV-DOH(Qatar), DOH-LAX(Qatar) and LAX-SFO(American). I booked the whole one-way flight for nearly $1300.

I had to travel 2 hours from my home to the airport. Yeah I know its long, but back at my home place in India, we had to travel long distance to reach the airport. My flight to DOH(Doha- Qatar Airlines Hub) was at morning 3.25AM. So I reached the airport by 1.30 AM and on my way to check in, I met one of my friends who is a ground staff at the TRV Airport and we had a little talk and he helped me to expedite the check in process and on his request, I got a seat with an extra leg room.Hurray!!!

I was happy and boarded the flight and the seat had extra legroom and I was the only person in that row. The flight took off to Doha and approximately by 5 hours flight landed in Doha.My layover time was nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes.So I rushed to the gate. The flights from Middle east to United States, especially from Doha have tight security screening process. I had to pass through 3 screening procedures before I boarded the flight.

I boarded the flight and I was assigned a window seat in economy class. The aircraft cabin was beautiful and their entertainment system was pretty good.The flight took off shortly and in the seat monitor, the travel time appeared was 16 hours and 40 minutes. I took a deep breath and looked at my co-passengers and to add to my misery, it was two 7 year old kids in my row. I am 6 ft tall and there was not enough legroom for me in the economy class especially in such a long haul flight.I took out my bose headsets and started watching the movies that I had shortlisted from their pretty standard movie collections.

Time moved on….moved on…moved on….

No time is not moving on.I took a nap which I thought was so long was eventually a 20 min nap. I watched another movie and the flight attendants served food and drinks and I thought of going for another nap and by that time, the kids started playing some games and it was so noisy even my bose headsets were unable to help me. After all these, I figured out that I have another 10 hours to end this misery.

Passengers became restless and started walking inside the aircraft.I was unable to do so as the kids was sleeping and I don’t want to wake them up.lol. I kept looking at my watch and the seat monitor at regular intervals. 30 minutes before landing, I heard the flight announcement that we are going to land. And we landed in LAX shortly.My hips felt like frozen and I had a hard time to get out of my seat and out of the aircraft.

Now I had another 3 hour layover to catch my American airlines flight to SFO.It was a short flight that took approximately 1 hour 30 mins.I landed at SFO and I was so tired. My eyes was barely open and I wanted to rush to my apartment to crash into my bed.In total it took me 23 hours to reach SFO from my home excluding the layovers.Literally, its halfway around the world.It took me a week to get over the jet lag and if you ask me I want to do it again, I say a Big NOooooo.

In my next blog, I will share how I figured out a better way to travel on long haul flights with less stress and without breaking your bank.See you next time.Cheers!!!