I fly in and the lights hit me. Well, they hit me when I was still in the craft. It reminded me of the Indian festival of lights called ‘Diwali’. I generally look out of the windows of the plane as I like to watch things fly by when we are about to land. How tiny things keep getting magnified. Small streams become rivers, little parks become big football stadiums, tiny, serpentine, silvery ribbons become winding, metalled roads and minute, slowly creeping ant-like creatures come into view and I realize that they are actually fast moving cars. It is almost magical and I love it. It keeps me enthralled. It reminds me of the first time I was flying into London and I saw the Emirates stadium – the home of Arsenal football club – and I almost jumped out of my seat in joy.

Well, without getting distracted further, as the plane started descending at around 7pm local time and Vegas came into view, I could barely look away. The lights were amazing. So many of them, all around, so brilliant that it seemed like an illuminated carpet spread all around as far as I could see. All this while, I had been scared. I knew no one in this city, hardly knew people in this country, and the rotation was put together hastily, I didn’t know 72 hours back that I was to travel, the team was new, the engagement unknown and with all these fears I had flown reminding myself that I would be here for 3-4 weeks and kept reminding myself that I was not supposed to go crazy. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was smiling. And the lights! They smiled back at me J

I finally managed to pull myself together and trudged off the plane groggily as it had been a 28-hour long journey, happy that I could finally stretch my legs and longing to breathe the fresh air. The walk through customs and immigrations went smoothly apart from the officer asking me what brought me to Vegas for a month and he doing a double take when I said I was a public accountant and in the city for the tax busy season. I can’t blame him.

The drive from the airport to my hotel, Planet Hollywood, was awesome and I knew my friend Dalan would be celebrating in Grand Rapids, Michigan as the Denver Broncos had won the Super Bowl. Needless to say, I spoke a lot to the guy driving the cab and I asked him to avoid the freeway just like the article “What not to do in Vegas” suggested which my darling sister (yes, she does a lot of these cute things however can be very irritating too when she wants to) sent to me when I was in London waiting for my connection.