Boarded the Emirates flight EK 525 from Rajiv Gandhi International airport Hyderabad, probably the last time from the Begumpet airport (The operations are all set to shift to the new airport at Shamshabad on the midnight of March 15). It was an airbus A330 with 2-4-2 seating arrangement. Thanks to the immense rush and a resultant delayed check-in , my colleagues could only book a seat in the middle section with the aisle on either side. Not that it mattered much as we were barely able to sit straight. So the moment we reached cruising altitude we pushed back our seats and dozed off. Breakfast was served and I was not going to miss that. In this era of low cost carriers God knows after how many days I got a chance to get served in the flight. That made my favorite omellette taste extra special (though frankly I don’t remember anything of it as I was more than half asleep). Surfed the channels a bit (mainly because it was touch screen which required bare minimimum effort) and saw that there was no need to even tear the seal of the earphone packet. The hindi film was an old time favorite Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (for which I had given a ‘great’ review in my blog).

Reached Dubai at around 7 AM local time and the only thing that was on my mind was to buy a 2-pin plug (a 3-to-2 converter). If you want to be Europe-ready that is the second most important thing you need after your visa. Mission was accomplished and I was completely europe-ready by the time we started walking towards our Moscow flight. The flight to Moscow was a Boieng 777 with a 3-4-3 seating arrangement. It being a day flight was thoroughly enjoyable. For most of the time it was a cloudless sky so we could see the mountain ranges below which slowly turned from brown to white. Had lamb biriyani in the flight and some vodka along with snacks. This time the hindi movie channel was showing the Akshay Kumar comic thriller ‘Bhool Bhulaiya’. Had seen the movie umpteen times (thanks to my volvo journeys) and again did not need the earphones to follow the dialogues. The lip movements and the sub-titles were enough. Reached Moscow at 2 pm local time and prepared ourselves for a long wait at the immigration. For first time travellers from India it generally takes a along time ranging from 2-7 hours (Heard they do a thorough research on you – right from Interpol to your client bank, Uralsib in our case). However, with so many Infoscions coming for Uralsib and also a few from Iflex, they must have also got bored of these checks and let us after just 30 mins.

As we finally entered Russia we located our cab. Some of our team members proceeded to Ufa. We bought some Roubles and we were on our way to the hotel.

We were to be put at Hotel Tsaritsino on a twin sharing basis. As expected, Alan (Alankar) was my roomie. Once we checked into our rooms, we saw that this was more of a furnished 2 BHK apartment rather than a hotel room. It had a huge drawing room with a sofa set and a bet along with a TV and a cabinet (all that which I do not have in my house in India – I still watch TV lying down on the floor matress). There is only 1 toilet and a cute little kitchen.

The temperature was 5 degrees C when we arrived but since then it has hovered in the range of -4 to +2. Lots of white snow all around and when I woke up the next day I could only see a sea of white everywhere with all cars covered by a white blanket of snow.