I was too excited when my father told me that for LTC (vacation) we are traveling to Europe. I was on cloud 9 by just imagining Europe as shown in the movies, beautiful roads, clean and crowed streets, men in formal suits every day, Swiss cow with bells on farms and many more.
After a few days of knowing that we are going, we had to go for Schengen Visa for the countries we were traveling in Europe. We went to VFS Global in Mumbai on June 3rd, 2018 and was very nervous about will we get the visa or not but we easily got all the procedures and interviews done and were told the passports will come to our house in a week or so.
My mother and I shopped and did all the preparations as per the place in our itinerary. We were after many years were going for a group holiday through a company called TKI Tours. The last group trip was at least 15 years ago with Travel Company. And being a single child going on family trips with just the three of us is a bit overwhelming and exhausting at the same time. I was looking forward to meeting new people, making new friends and enjoying every moment.
It was 10 nights/ 11 day Mini Europe tour which included:
Italy: Milan, Rome, Vatican City, Leaning Tower of Pisa and my favorite VENICE
Austria: Innsbruck and the crystal World of Swarovski.
Liechtenstein: The country between Austria and Switzerland.
Switzerland: Rhine Falls, Mt. Titlis, and Lucerne
Paris: Seine River cruise, City Tour and the magnificent Eiffel Tower.
We were doing the preparations but our Passports got late and we were nervous did we get the Visa or not. But we continued with our packing as we wanted to go and we were being optimistic.
We were to leave on 19th June 2018 and we got our Passports on 17th June. Relived and thrilled, I checked our List of things we should take when traveling internationally, I watched youtube videos so that I don’t miss out on things. Double, triple checked everything.
Finally, on 19th June 2018, we took a flight from my hometown, Indore to Delhi, from where we were supposed to travel to Milan via Tehran by Mahan Air. I had never heard of this airline before and to make tours affordable, many travel companies choose Mahan Air. From Indore itself, we had 11 members on the tour. Others came from many different parts of India like Mumbai, Jabalpur, Ludhiana, Patiala, and Lucknow.
As I had never heard of Mahan Air I was too skeptical about how the flights would be, how the food would be, I am in no control of flights, so are the pilots well trained (overthinker) but it was going to be my first ever international flight. Sleepy but full of enthusiasm, we cleared security check, immigration and boarded our 2 AM flight to Tehran.
I have imagined the flights to be a bit luxurious but it was like A Local Indian airline traveling abroad but with a particular smell and with air hostesses not knowing English too well. I was a bit disappointed with the flight and the food they served which was a veg sandwich with roasted almonds and olive oil. I loved the roasted almonds. I ate it and slept for an hour maybe. As we had a connecting flight to Milan, Tehran was the stop where we had to change the aircraft.
Now, as we landed in Tehran, it requires ladies to cover their heads with a headscarf, it is Iranian Law. We didn’t know about this but I was carrying a scarf with me so that If I feel cold in Airplane I could use it and my mom was wearing Punjabi suit with chunni so she had something to cover her head, many who didn’t have anything to cover their head borrowed from one another and Mahan Air, air hostess also gave some scarves which they had. With this hustle and just 30 minutes for our next flight, and all the procedure of taking boarding pass and doing immigration checks and security checks, people were panicking as were my family. My mother usually freaks out every time we travel but this time it was international with almost no communication. She was worried that we would miss our flights as my ticket was taking time to generate and all our group people left for boarding.
I out of the three am the calm one when it comes to traveling, so I told them to go forward and get done with security check and I will come as soon as the ticket is done. So they went ahead and the flight which we were boarding for, got delayed by half an hour. So we were roaming at the customs shop in Tehran, at almost 5 AM full of sleep in our eyes.
As we boarded in the airplane, this was huge one. It was far better than the Delhi to Tehran one. The cabin crew was far better and spoke English too and it had more leg space than the previous one. The food was ok, they served dal makhni with pav and roasted almonds and olive oil. I eat it and slept for the rest of the journey which was about 4 hours.
Finally, we reached the Milan Airport. It was a huge, Milan itself has 3 airports. After immigration and baggage claim, we met our tour manager and guide, Naseer sir and Arsalan, who informed us that we need to change our tour was about to begin.
This was my First experience of first flight internationally. Stay tuned for Mini Europe Tour overview. Do share your first international traveling stories.