Trip to US- Part 5: At Dulles international airport

We landed Washington DC (Dulles international airport) by 3.30 PM. The immigration queue was much much longer than I expected. But there were so many queues and the process was really quicker. I should mention that there were quite few people talking in Malayalam in the queue as well. I feel proud to be a Keralite, everywhere I go, I can talk in my own language, there will be at least one person to listen to it. It took almost half and hour to reach our turn, but less than 5 minutes to finish all checks etc.

We were just asked 'why are we in USA', verified our finger prints with the ones they captured during visa interview and were asked whether we are carrying any fruits. As I was having few fruits carried for Liya in my cabin luggage, I was asked to trash it. Done! It was so simple and relaxing experience. Nobody digged out our luggage or not even passed any wiered look!

Our next flight to Buffalo was scheduled for 5.00. We rushed with our luggage and sent it off to Buffalo. It was almost 4.30. We were rushing to catch next flight to Buffalo.

The airport was much much bigger in size than I ever imagined (even though it is not the biggest in the world). There are almost 127 gates, and almost 200 acres. By seeing the arrow which points with 'gate' name I thought it could be nearby. But it never appeared, rather the arrows kept moving as we followed it. We took lot of lifts and escalator. It was really difficult to run with Liya. We took too many lifts upward and downward and I did not get the logic behind. The fact is that I was not in a condition to count them and think and explore the logic behind 'going up' and coming down next. But I liked the doors in the lift. You enter from one side, got to some floor, the opposite side of lift open, you reach in some other building. The process continued for long time. Then reached in area, where we had to rely on 'air trains'. The trains were bigger, empty and really faster.

Again we took so many escalators, one of those appeared to be really scary for me. It appeared like covering 2 floors together, and looked like 80 degree straight downwards. End of it finally I could find the security check area. I was all tired by then. Little Liya was speechless and was trying to understand what was happening over two days.

Photo: Liya at Dulles airport

The checking area was not very bigger, but crowded. It took some 15-20 minutes to come out from the place. The checking was quiet irritating. They wanted us to remove even belts, Liya's baby food items, wallet, Liya's shoe, belt, her jacket, my shoe, jacket etc and pass under the scanner. Putting everything back in place was another headache. Again there was long way to go to the gate. It was already 5.30 by the time we reached our 'gate' and the flight has already left. The next one was at 10 in the night. The waiting was really boring. But Liya enjoyed- she crawled all over, there was a vast area for her, and was least crowded.