Stepping Back In Time...

The first leg of my journey to Oaxaca is over. A few moments backs, I landed at Tom Bradley International Terminal, at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). 

And in a sense I have stepped back in time - I took off from Incheon at around 3 PM on June 14, 2016 and landed at LAX at around 10 AM on June 14, 2016 - however the timestamp on this post will show the Korean time - around 3 AM on June 15, 2016!

I am jetlagged and disoriented and this date and time confusion made me go crazy. As the say in Hindi - दुनिया गोल है, or the world is round, my head is spinning!

But then here I am in the United States for a few hours before I board an Aeromexico flight to Mexico City! And I am excited to be in the New World!

And there is a huge queue to clear the Customs and Border Protection checks for entry into the United States. And that's weird, the United States does not permit transit on the airside. A passenger needs to clear immigration and customs before checking in again for the next flight!

As I waited I browsed through my photographs of Up In The Air...

Setting course westwards soon after takeoff... 

Overflying the Sea of Japan (or the East Sea, as the Koreans call it!)...

Lunch was served soon after takeoff in impeccable Korean Air style. I asked for a mocktail of orange and tomato juice, but the stewardess found that hard to understand and handed two glasses - one of orange juice and one of tomato and smiled...

My seafood meal with succulent prawns...

Overflying Japan...

The flight overflew Japan and crossed the Pacific nearly 2000 kilometers south of Alaska, before turning southwards west of Vancouver and Seattle...

Daybreak nearly 2000 kilometres from LAX...

And that was a magical sight...

And gradually, night turned into day...

The view from the tail-end camera...

Descending into LAX over the San Gabriel mountains...

Touch down at LAX...

Taxiing towards the Tom Bradley International Terminal...

Passing through the Customs and Border Protection checks was a breeze. They asked me a few questions given that this was my first time in the United States and they stamped my passport in less than a minute.

I collected my bags on a creaky old conveyor, got a rusty old trolley and passed through a stinky hallway to check in my bags again, this time for Mexico City and that told me why Donald Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" resonates with the aam aadmi - the common man of America - it was obvious their infrastructure is crumbling.

I made my way from Tom Bradley to Terminal 2, which was a short 5-minute walk to get my boarding passes for Mexico City and onward for Oaxaca, cleared security and headed to the Air Canada Lounge.

Terminal 2 was a lot worse than Tom Bradley - snaking queues, creaky escalators and dirty floors. This kind of stuff is not what I expected to see in this great country, and coming from Asia, this was alien to me - indeed it seemed I had stepped back in time...