Air India Dreamliner AI-312: Delhi to Melbourne (Connecting Mumbai via AI - 806)

Seconds clocked into minutes and minutes turned into hours, hours flew by; my AI Dreamliner flight felt like home, its attendants were enthusiastic, friendly and warm, the ambiance homely. One of the flip-side about this though, was that I never felt like I was flying international! Passengers were Indian, so were the attendants and so were we. Of course, I had my boarding pass to confirm otherwise...

Air India - Flight to Melbourne (2)
AI dreamliner in-flight monitor

And, the long haul of the views outside! Those that never seemed to end: the clouds appearing, disappearing, playing the game of hide and seek and the sun brushing them with unimaginable colors and the shadows adding a magical depth to the infinities of the sky. I loved looking out of my window: still! It was a theater... the sky, a drama, I, a viewer.

Air India dreamliner - Views from the airplane window
Air India dreamliner - Views from the airplane window
Air India - Views from the flight window
Play of the clouds

I don’t exactly know when I fell asleep reading the in flight magazine, or when the ‘SRK Hits’ song list stopped playing in my ears or when the food arrived. But the last one got me up, wide and awake. The smell of food was inviting, the sight tempting - I was hungry.

Air India - Flight Food
Flight food - Air India
Sweet and salad: my picks of the lot!
Melbourne, Victoria - First cut!

The local time is 6.30 AM and the outside temperature is 12 degrees Celsius ...

... blared a voice out from the audio even as I peeped out of my flight window to relish my first views of Melbourne.

It still seemed hard to believe that I was here... yes.

I told myself,

Melbourne - First View from the flight

Look - this is Melbourne!

Yet, surprisingly, it didn't feel like Melbourne. It didn't feel new, I could see no sparks, and the place didn't look any different than what my eyes were seeing 16 hours earlier, in India!

Why?

I knew and I was prepared... to wait for the answers, to go deeper, to scratch and unscratch the city, bit by bit. For aren't the real treasures seldom on the surface, but often hidden for you to discover? I knew the city would open up once it knew me better. Once I interacted more. And something inside told me,

 " ... therein would perhaps lay the real joy of this yatra, your Melbourne yatra."

With these thoughts in my mind, a hope in my heart and a smile on my face, I stepped out of my flight thinking about my next stop: Hotel Citigate in Melbourne!

Fast facts of Melbourne:

Melbourne >> the largest and capital city of the state of Victoria.

The state of Victoria >> the smallest of the mainland states in size but the second most populated in Australia.

Melbourne >> was once Australia’s largest and wealthiest city, thanks to a gold rush in the 1850’s.

Melbourne >> Also referred to as “second city” or the “cultural capital" of Australia.

Melbourne >> hosted the first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere in 1956 and became the country’s sporting capital.