My first flight journey 🛫

Photo by Philip Myrtorp on Unsplash

It’s the 15th of January, 2020. Scared? yes, a bit. I have already seen a plethora of flight disasters before boarding the first flight in life ✈️. I know it’s stupid but that’s what I saw apart from all the luggage and boarding rules.

Note: There is an awesome channel called Wonder. The Mayday series in this channel are quite nicely articulated documentaries.

Let me quickly jot down the most important rules for first-time flight travellers (It’s totally basic and you may skip this part) :

1. 8 kg cabin bag (the one you take inside the flight) and 15 kg check-in luggage is allowed for most domestic airlines across India.
2. You are not allowed to take any liquid or sharp things like a blade, cutting knife etc in the cabin luggage. Keep all those in the check-in one beforehand. Also, avoid keeping creams and lotions in your cabin bag.
3. Certain airports require you to self-check-in or online check-in (Please cross-check before coming to the airport) as they may charge extra in the airport.
4. I would recommend you take all your documents (in any)in your cabin luggage. It is safer there. Power Bank and batteries are also only allowed in the cabin bag.
5. Put a ribbon or some kind of mark in your check-in luggage. Trust me there are a lot of similar-looking pieces of luggage and you might mess up choosing the correct one at the destination.

Without further digressing, let’s discuss the trip.

Boarding Passes.

Our Boarding Passes ✈️

I was travelling with two of my friends, and one of them happened to book my flight at 9.30 pm😏. Since it was a last-minute booking and we did not have a lot of options to choose from.

Let me introduce my flight mates accompanying me. They are Pritom and Arkadeep — two absolutely nice friends from college. It was Pritom and my first flight experience and Arkadeep was the leader explaining to us the do’s and don’t in an airport and then on the flight. Honestly speaking, I was quite nervous to step into the flight. On the other hand, Arkadeep was on with all the gross flight stories he had experienced like his friend vomiting after landing, the unbearable ear pain, the takeoff and landing fear🤣. Apart from this conversation, he was quite a nice guide to Pritom and Me.

Tips:

1. Put a fragile sticker in your soft check-in luggage. Although I hardly believe they keep the luggage in a safer spot if that’s true at least your luggage will look better at your destination.
2. Take some dry fruits in your cabin luggage. You might need it if you face any unexpected delay and you don’t want to spend 100 bucks for a small cookie.
3. Take some cotton or earplugs on your first flight as you might have some ear pain due to the pressure difference.

From Left to Right: Arkadeep, Me and Pritom

We waited for quite a while in the airport as our flight got delayed till 10.15 pm. We knew we would be really late on reaching Kolkata so we booked two OYO rooms right then and informed the owner about our late arrival. OYO rooms are costly with booked offline so try to do an online booking and mention the owner beforehand.

Skyview during takeoff

Finally, we reached Kolkata at around 11.45 pm and took an Uber to the Hotel. I was stunned that there are 24 hour uber and swiggy services in Kolkata. Kolkata never sleeps!.

Tip: The taxis at the Kolkata airports are costly so if you are on a budget travel like we were better to take an uber ride.

We are glad the manager of the hotel took the pain to receive us at 1 am that night and even allowed us to order food and gave us the spare main gate key to receive the order by ourselves. He was a kind man and had great hospitality.

This was our 1 am dinner from a nearby Dhaba and trust me it was quite good and affordable. All this meal cost us around 400 rupees for the three of us.

Nun, Chicken and some papad 😋

Oh! Let me give you a mini room tour of my room before I end this blog. The other room booked was quite the same.

Only a pillow tour it seems 😋

And all this in a room just cost be around 400 again for a day. Isn’t it awesome?

Back at my place in Assam, we hardly get things so affordable in terms of living and transport however in bigger cities, we do get a wide range of options both financially and quality-wise.

We had an important interview the next day so at 2 am finally we called it a day and the flight adventure of nearly 6 hours came to an end.

Follow my page for more updates on my journey after the twenties. You can also clap(👏) and give me feedback regarding the content.