Destination: Astana

My flight was scheduled at 00:50 from Chennai to Kuala Lumpur for #ibmcsc. I was worried if they would charge me more for the excess luggage. Fortunately, they didn't but unfortunately the Malaysian airlines did the check-in upto Almaty only as it was my first point of entry to Kazakhstan. After boarding the flight,I watched a tamil movie(yep, a movie :-D I didn't sleep) and had some food served in the flight. My flight to Kuala Lumpur was not long, reached by 3.5 hours which was around 7:10 local time.

Since I was to meet Vishal and Srinath in the airport, I went to their arrival gate but couldn't find them there. So, I once again came back to the departure gate and caught up with Vishal. Both of us got our temporary boarding pass and went to have some breakfast at Olive Tree in the Kuala Lumpur airport. Mr. Nathan was so sweet to offer us two glass of chocolate Milk Shake - Reason: He got to know that I was from Tamil Nadu after seeing me sign in tamil :-) Back to the story, after our heavy breakfast, we headed to the departure gate C35 where we met Srinath. Vishal and Srinath got their boarding passes upto Astana and I got only upto Almaty as I have to clear customs in Almaty for my check-in luggage. The flight to Almaty was not full like the flight to Kuala Lumpur. So, each one of us had an entire row and sat comfortably. Even though I wanted to read a book, I didn't. I ended up sleeping the entire trip till Almaty for the next 8 hours, Woke up in between for food, water and some clicks. ;-)

 
Our route from Kuala Lumpur to Almaty crossed few good places like Andaman See, Bay of Bengal, Himalayas and also a dam near Lahore - So, we traveled across India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to reach Almaty. 








Once landed in Almaty, we went for the immigration check and I had to hurry to get my Check-in baggage and had to put it back for check-in to Astana and get my boarding pass. Unfortunately my hand baggage was also put as a part of check-in luggage and they asked me to pay extra for the hand luggage. I talked them out of it claiming that it was my hand luggage and they put it as check-in and I cant pay up for this. So, they let me go and I happily got my boarding pass and I didn't want to carry my hand luggage also. :-) The flight was nearly full and all the three of us ended up sitting in different seats.

Our flight was on time and we landed safely in Astana. Since we had completed our immigration check, we took our check-in baggage and took the car which was arranged by the CDC team and reached hotel safely. The sun set only after 9:30 PM and the day time is more here compared to India. After calling my home, I slept again.